Kate Didd

Have you ever met the adult equivalent of a toddler?

You know the one.

You say, “Don’t do that.”

And they immediately do exactly that thing while staring directly into your soul like a raccoon knocking over a trash can just to see what happens.

I have met several of them.

We call them narcissists now, although, if we’re being honest, the word has become the emotional version of clickbait. Somewhere along the cultural highway, “narcissist” became the universal insult of the internet.

Psychologists have pointed out that the term is wildly overused. In reality, only about 0.5–5% of the population meets the clinical criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Yet surveys of online discourse show that a majority of people report having labeled someone in their life a “narcissist.” Social scientists studying social media language trends have also found that the term’s usage online has increased several hundred percent over the past decade, often used less as a diagnosis and more as a weaponized moral judgment.

Which is ironic, because weaponizing shame and moral superiority to control someone else is… well… kind of part of the problem.

So yes, we’ve all met one.

But I didn’t just meet one.

I grew up with one.

My father was the easiest character to read in the room if you were paying attention. A showman. The savior of the oppressed. The man shaking hands in newspaper photographs with a smile polished so bright it could blind you.

The picture-perfect family you saw in print?

Yeah. That was me.

And at home, my mother was quietly screaming for safety.

So was I.

The tragedy of growing up like that isn’t just the fear. It’s the realization later that you aren’t even special for having survived it.

Studies on childhood trauma in the United States show that about 1 in 7 children experience abuse or neglect each year, and surveys of adults report that over 60% experienced at least one significant adverse childhood experience growing up. Family violence, emotional manipulation, and coercive control are so common that millions of children quietly grow up learning survival strategies instead of algebra.

Which means my story isn’t rare.

It’s statistically ordinary.

And that realization hurts in a very specific way.

The Ten-Year Internet Fight

Now here’s where the romantic comedy portion of this tragedy begins.

Because for nearly ten years, I had this ridiculous online rivalry with a girl.

We fought like intellectual alley cats.

Morality debates.

Legal threats.

Public shame campaigns.

Screenshots flying like confetti at a dysfunctional wedding.

It was exhausting.

But here’s the thing about surviving narcissists as a child: you eventually become very good at recognizing the toddler pattern.

You say no.

They do the thing.

You react.

They thrive on the reaction.

So for years I did what survivors eventually learn to do.

I gave them toys.

Distractions.

Projects that looked important but weren’t actually sacred to me.

While they ran circles chasing those things, I built the real life quietly behind the curtain.

It wasn’t even intentional at first. It was survival strategy that accidentally turned into architecture.

Somewhere along the way I developed this anonymous anatomy of myself, a side of me that could exist freely without the audience of people who expected me to be a monster.

Because that was the role they assigned me.

And sometimes the safest move is to play the villain in someone else’s story while protecting the things that actually matter.

The Legal Love Language

People love to say things like “just walk away.”

Those people have clearly never dealt with a professional boundary violator.

Sometimes you can’t walk away.

Sometimes you have to document your way to freedom.

Years of records.

Screenshots.

Statements.

Legal filings stacked like the world’s most depressing scrapbook.

Until eventually you reach the holy grail of peace:

An indefinite cease-and-desist.

And let me tell you something.

Those things are beautiful.

Because it’s not about revenge.

It’s about a legal line in the sand that says:

If you cross this again, the system already knows who you are.

At any moment, if someone tries to resurrect chaos, you can simply point to the mountain of history and say:

“No thank you. We’ve done this before.”

Peace, it turns out, is sometimes made of paperwork.

The Quiet Life They Didn’t Believe

And then something funny happened.

While people were busy arguing about me, diagnosing me, debating me, and occasionally trying to destroy me…

I just kept living.

One rep at a time.

One day.

One minute.

One build.

I had children.

I built a marriage.

I started three businesses.

I kept dreaming.

The most confusing part for my critics seemed to be that I talked constantly, ideas, philosophies, project, yet no one actually knew what I was doing.

And that’s the trick.

You can speak oceans of truth while still protecting the sacred blueprints of your future.

Because some dreams only survive if they’re incubated privately.

When It Was Me vs. Me

Here’s the final twist in this romantic comedy.

The girl I fought with for ten years?

She unknowingly taught me something priceless.

Eventually, the battle stops being you versus them.

It becomes you versus you.

And when that moment comes, something extraordinary happens.

You realize you showed up for yourself.

Every time.

Through chaos.

Through shame.

Through the bizarre circus of people projecting stories onto your life.

You kept building.

And once you know you can trust yourself like that…

Sadness stops having the same power.

Because if someone wants to stop you now, they’re going to have to do something far more dramatic than gossip or criticism.

They’d practically have to kill you.

And even then you’d probably haunt the place out of pure stubborn optimism.

The Hardest Thing in the World

People think surviving hell is the difficult part.

It isn’t.

The hardest thing is Tuesday.

A normal Tuesday.

A quiet morning where there’s no chaos left to fight.

Just certainty.

Just peace.

Just the soft, almost suspicious realization that you scratched your way out of the depths of hell… and built something beautiful with the hands they tried to break.

And sometimes, on those peaceful Tuesdays, I think about that girl I fought with for ten years.

Not with anger.

Almost with gratitude.

Because every romantic comedy needs a rival character.

And every survivor eventually discovers the same punchline:

The toddler only wins the game if you keep reacting.

But if you quietly build a life they can’t touch…

You win the entire story.