A Short Story: Anger Is What Festers Inside
On narcissistic abuse, a story with fictional characters. How C-PTSD is a slow burn and often goes unnoticed because of how subtle and deeply personal manipulation can be over time.
CW!! abuse but entirely fictional, any similarities to what I’ve been through is purely coincidental
Let me tell y’all a story about what happens when narcissism and narcissistic abuse go unnoticed, on a more deeply personal level :) if you get me, you get me. If you’re not here yet in your understanding, you need to be. This is brutal honesty about how abusive relationships have shown up for me in the past. Obviously, with an artistic take and, lots of fictional instances. [I’ve never been married, or murdered anyone!]
Anger is what festers inside. It sits inside of her and slowly, but surely, rots her to the fucking core if she lets it. Sometimes she can treat it with care, ask Anger what’s wrong, and other times, those times she knows she fucked up, all it does in response is bite and scratch at her insides, tearing her apart with faceted claws and teeth.
Jen has been angry for so long that, Anger is Jen. It’s all she knows. She wakes up and feels its blistering heat in her bones. She brushes her teeth, gnawing the bristles to the bones, and wonders why she needs to buy a new brush so frequently. Anger has been with her for decades now, ever since she was 5 years old and, her Uncle started making sexual comments at the family functions and, it just never left. Anger brought in his bags, dropped them all over the floor, tore down the old wallpaper, and sat down in Jen’s favorite chair to “sit and rest its eyes.”
Jen doesn’t know it but, Anger is poisoning her. In that tea she drinks every morning, when she drops the bag on the carpet and leaves yet another stain. In her bitter remarks when she’s at her cashier job and, the male customer’s eyes linger on her lips for just too long while they degrade her work ethic, like some fucked up public foreplay for their discord jerk-circle. And even at night when she kisses her kitty June goodnight, how she begrudgingly puts off the little box in favor of a few more minutes of job searching, while she lies in bed. Anger is seeping through the cracks in Jen’s life, and beginning to burst at the seams.
Until one day, Jen meets someone new. She’s been looking for another job for ages, one that wouldn’t be so people-facing, maybe less degrading if she can climb up the corporate ladder just a smidge— but she meets this guy, while on the job, actually. She makes a bitter remark as he tells her she should “smile more often, it’s beautiful,” not realizing he’s about the hundredth bastard that day to do so and no, this isn’t the right way to treat another human being while they’re focused on surviving, and double no, she doesn’t owe anyone a smile while rent is due and she’s not exactly going to make it.
Something in her shifts when, the guy, rather than insisting on her smile like most, apologizes up front. The newness strikes her, and she’s left confused. Was this normal, and everyone else was just an asshole, or was this guy suddenly giving off green flag energy?
[Dear audience, please do remember that this stranger was the one to make the vaguely sexual and degrading comment to begin with, as our protagonist Jen continues on her way.]
Jen can’t help but smile a little now, and the stranger, let’s call him Ben, perks up a little. He has a gentle-looking demeanor, with a hint of something mysterious beneath the surface and, Jen can’t help but be drawn in by this. They end up shooting vague flirting back and forth for a bit, Jen uncertain as it has been a long time since she’s gotten positive attention from a guy, if from anyone at all, frankly. Ben picks up on this and lays on the compliments.
“Oh, I’m surprised you don’t get all the guys’ attention here, you’re so cute!”
Jen shoots back, “Well, I do, but it’s never from guys I’m actually interested in.”
Ben smirks and says, “Oh? Does this mean I can grab your number, beautiful?”
Jen hesitates, it being that this is a stranger, and she’s on the job, replaying their conversations. Lunch rush has just passed so, she understandably brushes over the tension from the beginning of the conversation. It was probably just how busy it was, this guy is really cute, and nice! I can’t see the danger here.
Jen hands off her number and, later that week, they plan for a date. The first few days of chatting are incredible. Jen answers Ben as soon as he texts, even while on the job. He’s fast with his compliments and very charming. She’s never felt so special before.
[Remember how they met? Yeah…special…]
And surprisingly, she’s not Anger anymore. She feels softer, like there could be good in the world after all…if this one spot of sunlight were to stick around. Anger, meanwhile, hasn’t stopped poisoning her. Jen begins to answer Ben on the job, while she works. Her supervisor starts giving her dirty looks, but this just feels easier to brush off, with Ben around. Their date is on Thursday. If she can just make it one more day, she’ll have a big night with him and, everything will finally be okay.
Jen doesn’t realize it, but she’s been putting a lot of high expectations on herself. She thinks that answering quickly is necessary to keep him, because her friends have told her that this one “seems nice,” and “oh my, he hit on you at work? That’s so scandalous!”
Jen brushes off the little voice in her gut every time it appears, asking “do we know enough about this guy to like him? He’s still a strang—” Nope, not thinking about that. I’ll find out all about him on the date!
When they text, they don’t really talk about anything substantial. Jen tries to ask about his day, but his replies are usually limited to “am good wbu?” and “wyd?”
Jen feels like she needs to give more, even though she’s exhausted. This could be my break from this endless nightmare, she thinks to herself, quietly in the night before she goes to bed, her litter box still unchanged, the job search ceasing in favor of his texts. I just need to find out what’s going on underneath that brain of his.
Finally, the date night arrives. Jen spends extra time getting ready after work, and by the time Ben comes to pick her up, she’s actually running a little late. He honks his horn thrice by the time she’s outside.
Coming!!! <3 she texts back in a flurry, Anger over her shoulder, telling her “don’t get too upset just yet, it’s an honest mistake.” Anger pours more poison in her pregame tea and tells her to drink up.
The date night goes well, all things considered. Jen is tired but finds a way to keep up her bubbly personality long enough to seemingly satisfy Ben, who tells her once again how much he likes her smile. In the back of her throat, Anger whispers “he’s repeating himself because that’s the only thing beautiful about you.”
After pizza and a few drinks, Jen, exhausted, is asked “want to go to mine?” and she does the quick mental chess in her mind— Will I miss work tomorrow if I do this? Wait, didn’t I tell him I’m working? Shoot, what about rent, am I going to make that if I miss another day?
Shaking her head for clarity through the floaty tipsy feeling, Jen smiles and nods. It’s what her mother told her to do when in doubt, especially if you had a rough day. It was self care to let someone else guide you every once in a while, after all.
Ben smirks and guides her into his car, a little shakily, and off they go to Ben’s.
Two months in, Jen stops hanging out with her friends. She tells them that she’s too tired and can’t bear to go out as often.
Three months in, Jen starts getting her phone blown up at work. It’s Ben, wondering where she is, even when she told him she had a shift today. She excuses herself to her manager and takes his call in the bathroom. She comes out teary-eyed. Her co-worker asks her if something happened, and she shakes her head. “Just a tough day.”
Four months in, Jen starts wearing baggier clothes. She notices people looking at her weird in the street, like they’ve just seen a ghost. Ben never tells her her smile is beautiful, anymore. Jen loses her job the next week when she comes to work too high to pass off as “just tired.”
Jen moves in with Ben, since she no longer has friends to stay with. Jen devotes her extra time to “figuring out” Ben, what’s going on with him. Why he doesn’t act the same as he used to. Ben takes this as a threat, and starts degrading and interrogating her. He tells her that he wouldn’t be so mean if she wasn’t so awful to him, first. He tells her it’s her fault she lost her job for showing up blasted.
Later, Ben comes into the kitchen while Jen has her headphones in, zoning out on social media, comparing herself to her ex friend’s relationship. Anger sits there with her, moving her fingers to keep scrolling even when she wishes she would stop. Anger and Ben tell her in unison: “I love you, you know.” Jen sits there in silence. She keeps scrolling.
Ben doesn’t apologize anymore, when he blows up. Jen doesn’t try to understand why he does what he does. Jen just keeps to herself and zones out whenever she can. She misses the old Ben, and resolves that it must have been something she did to deserve this all. Maybe things would be different if I quit my job right when I met him. Maybe he would have helped me find something better. Now, I just feel useless.
Jen doesn’t sleep, anymore. She’s given this up for Ben, too. She thinks she would give up her very soul and life for him, if it meant he’d stay. She calls this love. Ben says she could never love someone like him. And so, the cycle repeats.
One day Jen starts reading again. She had forgotten how much she missed reading. She even asks Ben to pick up her old favorite tea from the store. She doesn’t like going back, since she was fired those many years ago.
Ben returns with peppermint, when Jen had asked for earl grey. “Sorry, I don’t know the difference,” is what an idiot would say. Ben says, “this is my favorite. I think you’ll like it better,” with a small grin. That same cold, mysterious look behind his eyes. The light never truly reaches them anymore, ever since that first date.
Anger consumes Jen in this moment. But she can’t bring herself to say anything but “thank you, darling.”
Ben gives her a peck on the cheek and tells her he’s going out. Jen doesn’t ask where he’s going. She sits there in silence. Tea unmade, book unopened, remembering how her life used to look so different, way back when.
She’s reminded that she used to make her earl grey tea with a kettle her mother passed down to her. It was lost when her old landlord changed the locks on her, when she didn’t make rent again— probably sold that piece of shit for money.
Tears in her eyes, Jen opens the book before her. She sees another flash, a fragment of who she used to be in the margins. She’d spend hours analyzing her favorite quotes in blue ink, marking the pages. She took pride in every single book she had ever known, and this used to be one of her absolute favorites. The blue ink sits smeared now, hot tears falling onto the time-yellowed pages. She squints, hoping the words would just remain clear for another moment.
Closing the book now, Jen crawls into fetal position on the hardwood floor. She misses her stained rug, her cat Jules, how she used to dance to music as she made dinner for herself. She wishes she cleaned the litter box before it was too late.
Bruised skin and bite marks stare back at her as she looks in the bathroom mirror, later that night. Overcome by guilt, she prays to go back to the beginning. Her beginning, where she wasn’t full of all of this hate and disdain for what was supposed to be her dream life.
That night, Jen has a dream. Guided by what appears to be an angel, she finds her way back to that very day, when she was five years old, and her uncle told her those same very words: “you should smile more, all the men in your life will thank you for it.”
She wakes up sobbing, Ben still vacant from the house. Anger tells her, “you finally see it.”
“See what? I can’t see anything. I’ve been living my life with blinders on.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“I lost something then, didn’t I?” Jen asks, remembering that moment with her Uncle.
“Yes. Agency.”
“Agency.”
Anger agrees to stop poisoning Jen, on one condition. Jen agrees.
A few months later, Jen is staying with her parents again. She’s found her way back to who she used to be, back to her home. Her mother Joyce puts on the kettle when she wants her earl grey tea, and Jen is free to do what she pleases, so long as she doesn’t go too far from the house.
Nevermind that she’s on probation for assault of some guy who vaguely looked like Ben. Nevermind that she never stopped smoking to drown out the memories of Ben. And nevermind that his body rests beneath the foundation of their little gazebo in the backyard. Jen has her agency back. As far as things are concerned, she’s more at peace than she’s been since she was five years old.