H.G. Tudor - Black Hole: The Narcissistic Hoover

1. Introduction

The Hoover. A household appliance made by a company which mainly manufacture white goods. The word Hoover has become synonymous with the act of using a vacuum cleaner and joins the ranks of other words which began as brands but through regular and commons usage have become verbs and regular nouns. How many times do people refer to a document being Xeroxed after the manufacture of the photocopier? Pass me Post-it note even though this the brand name for those pieces of adhesive paper. A Frisbee is another and so is Roller Blades. Did you know that aspirin, escalator, zipper, yo-yo and even heroin are actually brand names which have become generic through use and the passage of time? Accordingly, Hoover ranks within a number of brands which have found themselves becoming verbs and regular nouns. We talk of the need to hoover the house in order to clean it, when strictly speaking we ought to say we need to vacuum the house. The word hoover has gone even further than just being a verb for the act of using a mechanised device for cleaning, it is synonymous with the act of sucking something in. I recall at school that in our physics lessons we were told, very plainly, that we were never to use the word suck when describing certain actions. It was deemed unscientific. The word suck was never to be used when describing the effect of a vacuum on its environment. Now the word hoover has found a further use as a word to describe the act of a narcissist when he or she sucks his victim back in. It is rather apt that the brand name for a cleaner which operates on the basis of creating a partial vacuum has become linked to the actions of a narcissist. Both the act of sucking someone back in and the existence of a vacuum are entirely apt for the effect of drawing the person back towards the clutches of our kind is akin to sucking them back in and hoover suits the bill as an appropriate term. It is even more appropriate because in order to suck something we need to create a partial vacuum. If you want to suck your drink up through a straw, you need to create a partial vacuum in your mouth in order for the liquid to be drawn towards your waiting mouth. Similarly, in order to hoover an individual towards the narcissist then one should imagine that a vacuum would be necessary also. It is. The narcissist is a vacuum. An empty space devoid of love, compassions, remorse and many other positive traits and emotions. The narcissist is like a black hole, the most powerful hoover in existence. A place devoid of air and light where stars, planets and matter are drawn inexorably towards the black hole and then crushed. The solar systems and constellations are hoovered up and with all matter they are compressed by this vast gravitational force into a point of singularity which defies all known laws of time and reality. Just like a black hole, the narcissist exists a near irresistible pull which hoovers in people time and time again, crushing them and reducing them to near nothingness. Just like a black hole, narcissists appear to defy the rules concerning time and reality; the narcissist operates to his own time and in an alternate reality where everything appears logical and ordered to him and her but utter incomprehensible to anybody else.

The narcissistic black hole absorbs everything in its path. Should you venture too close to a narcissist (and nearly all do unwittingly the first time) then your emotional strength, self-esteem, self-worth and self-confidence will all be pulled away from you and swallowed up. Money, assets, pride, health, relationships, interests and friendships will all be consumed by this devouring monster as it keeps moving forward and drawing in more and more people, emotions and things that matter into its all-consuming maw. Once trapped by the massive gravitational pull of the narcissists initial charm and then the soul sapping grip of his or manipulative wiles, you will struggle to escape the devastating effect of this pull. If you do manage to pull away from it, the narcissist will exert the hoover in order to try and haul you back and continue with his or mission to crush you to a point of singularity, stripping you of all you hold dear in order to feed his or need for fuel. This ever present need for fuel is what drives the narcissist on. This fuel is required in an attempt to fill this black hole but this can never be filled and thus the narcissist keeps on doing what he knows best; charming, devaluing, discarding and the hoovering again. The eternal cycle continues.

In order to fill the vacuum, the narcissist looks to draw in the resources and traits of other people and especially that person he has targeted and chosen as his primary course of fuel. This target is almost without exception the person who the narcissist engages in an intimate relationship with so that they can held tight and provide the narcissist with the prime and potent fuel he or she demands. This target is seduced and during this time, the golden period, when everything is wonderful, the target falls deeply in love with the charming narcissist. Using his or her formidable powers of manipulation, the hapless victim is lured to the narcissist and made to feel like a kind or queen. In response, their love, gratitude, admiration and adoration provides the narcissist with positive fuel. The narcissist drinks deeps of this and so long as this is kept flowing for the next months and possibly even longer, then all is rosy in the garden. The victim is duped into believing that he or she has found his or her soulmate, they are treated like a god or goddess and they cannot believe how lucky he or she is to find someone so wonderful, so loving, so understanding and so compatible as the narcissist. The one, the other half and the soul mate has been found.

This golden period never lasts. The potency of the fuel diminishes and that deluge of fuel becomes but a trickle and this is of no use to the narcissist. The life blood of his existence has been depleted. He risks the loss of his identity as the stolen shards and fragments which have been take from those who the narcissist interacts with, begin to fall away. This threatens the identity that the narcissist has created and diminishes his attractiveness to other targets. At the same time, this fuel which has held together the construct against which the shards and fragments are applied, has begun to weaken as its power source drains. This risks release the creature that lurks beneath and has been imprisoned by the construct. This threatens the very existence of the narcissist. The narcissist cannot allow this to happen. He or she cannot be consigned to the abyss and therefore he or she must find new fuel either from a new source or more often by seeking negative fuel from that primary source. The victim who felt that they had been placed on a pedestal is then crudely knocked off that pedestal and falls hard upon stony and thorny ground. Bruised, bleeding and bewildered this victim then tries to understand what has happened. He or she is subjected to a confusing and terrible array of abusive behaviours which are all designed to provoke the victim into providing negative fuel to the narcissist and allows the narcissist to maintain his or her control over the victim. The victim fights to understand what has happened, he or she tries so hard to recover the golden period. Sometimes it returns, but only for a short while, a brief period of rejoicing which is just used to heighten the ongoing devaluation. The victim rarely tries to escape as they cannot understand what has happened. They need to know and thus they remain. They want to fix things, make things right and return to the golden period and as a consequence they hold on tighter to the narcissist. The narcissist does not care for the gradual erosion of the victim, so long as the negative fuel flows then that is all that matters. The narcissist is already organising the new primary source and his or her wonderful fresh and invigorating supply of fuel. The victim, now responding less and less to the jibes and barbs as they begin to shut down and become numb as a consequence of the ongoing abusive manipulations and thus even the negative fuel lessens. The narcissist decides, with his new shiny primary source in place, to discard the near spent victim and they are hurled to one side in another mystifying act.