I Met The Devil - A Poem About Narcissistic Abuse

I wrote this because I lived it.

Because I know what it is like to meet someone who said all the right things. Who made you feel seen. Who felt like everything. And then slowly, quietly, made you feel like nothing.

Abuse does not always announce itself. Sometimes it arrives disguised as the person you have been waiting for your whole life. It speaks in the language of love. It moves with warmth and patience and charm. And by the time you understand what is happening, you have already lost so much of yourself that you barely recognise who is looking back at you in the mirror.

This poem is for every survivor who ever asked themselves how they didn't see it coming.

You didn't miss it. It was hidden. On purpose.

I Met The Devil

I met the devil once.

He didn't come with fire. He didn't come with horns. He came with warm hands and the right words at exactly the right moment.

He said I love you like he meant it. He said I need you like it was a gift. He said you're the only one who understands me and I believed him. God help me, I believed him.

The devil doesn't announce himself. He learns your wounds first. He finds the places you were broken long before he arrived and he calls them beautiful.

Until he doesn't.

Until beautiful becomes pathetic. Until I love you becomes look what you made me do. Until the warmth is gone and you're standing in the cold wondering when you became someone you don't recognise.

That's how he works. Not with fire. With patience. With charm. With the slow and careful dismantling of everything you thought you were.

I met the devil once.

He didn't look like evil. He looked like home.

And that's the thing nobody tells you.

The devil doesn't need to whisper hate. He just has to make you believe that what he's doing to you is love.

Jared Whitaker

If that poem just hit you somewhere deep, I want you to know something important.

What you experienced was not love. It was not your fault. And you are not alone.

The cycle you lived through has a name. It has a pattern. And it has an end point, if you can understand why it happened and what made you vulnerable to it in the first place.

That is exactly what my new book Built To Be Broken explores.

Why empaths are targeted by abusers. How childhood wounds shape the relationships we find ourselves in as adults. Why certain people, the kindest, most generous, most deeply feeling people, keep ending up with someone who exploits exactly those qualities. And what breaking that cycle looks like for real.

It is not a book about blame. It is a book about understanding. And understanding is where healing begins.

Order your copy here: amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GZMY9HD6

And if tonight is a hard night, please reach out.

Text SHOUT to 85258 Call Samaritans on 116 123

You do not have to carry this alone.