A Manual for Spiritual Survival
How to Hold the Line Between Peace and Poison:
Some people can’t be cut out and can’t be let in.
They hover at the edges of your life like unstable weather.
Sometimes bright.
Often dangerous.
Always unpredictable.
You learn to read them the way sailors read skies.
You don’t argue with a storm.
Living near a drama doper,
someone with narcissistic or borderline traits, is exactly that.
Navigation, not confrontation, is what you need when logic or empathy fails.
But rhythm often works.
You move close enough to stay humane
and you step back before the waves rise.
You can’t win an argument
with someone whose emotions rewrite reality in real time.
They cry, accuse, adore and destroy, sometimes twice before lunch.
They don't want an honest exchange.
They don’t want truth because truth has edges.
They want fusion because fusion has none.
They want your mind to dissolve into theirs
so they never have to face their own instability alone.
But if you give them that,
they feel safe for a moment,
then resent you for it.
If you cannot walk away from them, you need to draw a boundary.
Not out of anger. Out of survival.
You keep your voice low.
You keep messages short.
You say only what is necessary.
Drama gets no fuel, because attention is oxygen.
You offer the minimum required to stay decent,
a birthday card or a polite greeting, nothing more.
To outsiders it looks cold. It isn’t.
It is disciplined mercy.
Stepping fully into their world is like stepping into quicksand.
The more you move, the deeper you sink.
The task is simple to describe and hard to live.
Hold the line between peace and poison.
Peace, because you refuse hatred.
Poison, because you refuse to drown with them.
There is no closure.
No gratitude.
What you get is distance and the ability to breathe.
That is enough.