SURVIVING NARCISSISTS: From Fearful Notes to the Blue Velvet Shawls of Strangers

 I woke up at 1 a.m. feeling disoriented in an Airbnb room. The space felt unfamiliar, oddly temporary, and it made me ache for a place that I hesitated to call home. One that is the size and quiet dignity of my former master suite in the old manor.

The longing came with an unexpected sense of grief. Perhaps it was the idea of family itself—Ayah, his wife, and their daughter—that haunted me more than the place. I was only in the city for a week to attend clinic appointments after my recent surgery, but it felt so heavy as though I had moved to a different country.

It was a rocky relationship from the start, and I was finally truly accepted as a child during my hospitalisation. Even then, it was still so new and raw, and the memories of the past still lingered. It still does to this day.

 

After Mama died, Ayah disowned me. He said I was not his child and told me to change my last name to bin Abdullah.

Years later, I learned that this was, in a cruel way, true. My biological father had never stayed. He appeared briefly, looked at me, and left. Later, I learned he had sent people to watch me. That story comes later. Even now, I don’t know whether it was guilt, fear, or ownership that drove him—but I learned early that blood does not guarantee protection.

Even though a lot has changed, nothing can erase the history, nor the paths I walked on in the past years, when it seemed that only outsiders ever loved me in the way one hopes to be loved.

 

2021, Bayan Lepas, Penang

My mother had been pronounced dead on my eighteenth birthday. Shortly after, her eldest daughter decided to take me back to Penang, despite one of Mama’s old friends offering to adopt me. I was told it would only be for a few weeks. I did not know then that this was the beginning of nearly six months of psychological captivity.

My mother's old friend from the 80s, Norma Norell, had offered to adopt me. It was oddly what my mother had intended for, but I brushed it off. I had never met the lady, and I was scared, I guess.

So, I confided in Nora's arms, not knowing that I'd be choked.

In Bayan Lepas, I forgot who I had once been.

The life I grew up in—the social gatherings, the cultured ease of being a socialite’s son—slowly dissolved. Not because it was openly taken from me, but because it was reframed as meaningless, even shameful. I was reminded daily that I was incapable of surviving on my own, that without guidance I would collapse. Over time, I stopped correcting the narrative. I became smaller. It was easier.

In that house, I was no longer a person but a role.

Nora treated me not as a brother, but as something that belonged to her. Slowly, painfully, I began to understand that I was being used to fill a void she had never healed. Her long-regretted abortion hovered silently over everything. In her mind, I was not her sibling—I was the son she believed should have been hers.

She dressed me, monitored me, controlled who I spoke to and when I slept. She followed my movements, read my expressions, and rewrote my intentions aloud before I could speak. Any attempt at independence was framed as defiance. Any distress was labelled as instability. When I asserted myself, she corrected me. When I withdrew, she praised me for being “good.”

I became her puppet.

The house turned into a theatre, and she was both director and lead actress. I learned quickly that survival depended on staying in character. I began to feel like Baby Jane—fraying, desperate, slowly losing touch with myself—yet trapped like Blanche, confined to a role that demanded submission and silence. I was not allowed to grow, only to perform.

Writing became the only place where I still existed. I wrote poems, letters, fragments—often in French or Italian, languages she did not understand. Writing was therapy. Writing was a refuge. When my voice was monitored, words became my body. When my body was controlled, language became my escape. I stopped speaking because speaking only fed the manipulation; writing was the one thing they could not fully reach.

 

Nora spoke cruelly about my mother, saying she was unfit, irresponsible, inadequate—that she herself would have been a better mother. She humiliated me publicly, belittled my education, compared meals, and measured affection. The degradation was constant, always followed by desserts or shopping, as if cruelty could be erased with sugar.

I cried every night in the dark, listening to Dalida’s Je Suis Malade, writing letters to my dead mother.

While still in Penang, I tried calling Ayah. He rejected the call. That was when Nora said it, calmly, decisively:

“You see? No one cares about you. Only I do.”

The sentence lodged itself deep inside me. The theatre was complete. No rescue was coming.

Eventually, we travelled to Kuala Lumpur for Hari Raya and stayed in a hotel. One night, while Nora was out with her boyfriend, I broke. I could not endure the performance any longer. I left the room and sought refuge at Teha’s place.

I thought I had escaped. I hadn’t.

At Teha’s, scripts were handed to me—what to say, how to confront, how to finally stand up for myself. But when the moment came, and Nora turned on me, Teha shifted sides. She watched as I was dismantled, then later called it diplomacy. I was framed, quietly and efficiently, until I became the problem everyone agreed upon.

 

2023, Petaling Jaya — Zakry, Hunger, and The German Man

Not long after, I received a one‑month job offer as a copy editor. For the first time in months, I felt briefly real again. When the month ended, I left and moved to Petaling Jaya.

Norma still contacted me while I was in Penang, but once I reached Kuala Lumpur, I suppose I felt ashamed. “I rejected her offer, and now, look at what I've become”

Unfortunately, that was when Zakry entered my life.

By 2023, Zakry and his family insisted on living in the same house as me. Their presence was immediate, oppressive, and inescapable. The accusations Zakry hurled were not always his own—they were often fed to him by his wife.

I could never tell what was true, what was twisted, or what existed only in their minds. Still, the anger was real, the fear was real, and it shadowed every movement I made. Even now, long after I am physically safe, I lie awake some nights, haunted by the echoes of his rage, whispering to myself in the dark: Why are they like that?

Food became another weapon. Meals, once a simple need, became a test of survival. Eating too much, eating the wrong thing, or even taking what was offered could trigger anger or scorn.

I learned to ration my portions, to measure every bite, to stay hungry rather than risk another confrontation. Hunger was not just physical—it was a constant reminder that control had shifted away from me. Each meal carried unspoken rules; each plate was a silent trial I had no choice but to pass. I would catch his wife giving me a sinister look each time I took in her food.

And yet, in the midst of that suffocating fear, a glimmer of human kindness appeared.

Roland, a German friend old enough to be a father, welcomed me into a boutique hotel in Kuala Lumpur. For the first time since Penang and the chaos of KL with Nora and Teha, I felt safe, understood, and free to be.

In Roland, I felt the gentle authority and presence of someone who could have been a father, without any expectation or judgment.

He played the film, Blue Velvet, letting the theme song fill the quiet spaces in my chest, and I shared my own songs, Luigi Tenco, and Dalida, the songs I had hidden away in my heart, fragile but alive.

He introduced me to the Zorba dance, explaining how the people there would stop everything they were doing to dance to the music. “Even in tears, people will dance,” he said. He shared his food and drinks with me, unconditionally

Just like that, a stranger healed a part of the heartbreak that had followed me from Penang through KL—a small heaven I would remember every time I returned to the city.

 

As a young man who had just blossomed into adulthood, my slim figure and delicate features often caught the attention of girls and older men. But that evening was different. I was not a boy toy, not a Casanova, not a gigolo to anyone's fantasy.

Roland had a family, had retired, and was travelling constantly. Even after his open-heart surgery, he told me he was back on his feet and touring Asia. I thought of my short, un-lived bond with my British stepfather, John, who was an active traveller, and had left before I could ever trace his face.

Writing remained my staple routine, and Roland knew that I was a writer. The next morning, he gave me ideas for topics to write about as we sat by the window, looking down at the streets of Kuala Lumpur from the coffee house. He shared his wisdom, his perspective on life and the world, while I slowly remembered how it felt to feel safe, curious, and alive.

There were no sexual activities, as people accused me of. No affair as others may wish for. He became a friend.

The old man reminded me that survival was more than enduring—it was reclaiming. Words became my body when my body was controlled, and my freedom when freedom was denied.

Even in the shadow of abuse, kindness, music, dance, shared meals, and guidance could remind a heart that it was still alive, still capable of joy, and still capable of being whole.

Now, as I write this in reflection, I am glad to be out of that theatre. I no longer seek validation from those who only knew how to control.

After hundreds of poems and melodies written in silence, I know this much: I survived not because they were kind, but because I learned how to write myself back into existence.

 

“From fearful notes to the caring and loving velvet shawls of strangers… I stitch them into the blue velvet curtains to back me up on the stage. Although it’s not as ravishing as the red, it’s blue, and it’s mine to hang.”

Love, Qadeem Zieman