How Toxic Relationships Turn Empaths into Narcissists
"I am a rabid narcissist. Keep reading. I will prove it." — A brutally honest exploration of how love, fear, and pain can transform even the most empathetic person into the thing they fear most.
Twelve stairs between the life they risked everything for
and the woman she needed to become.
Ignition
Season One
The cost of impossible love · A memoir series by Deborah Parker
Follow the story →The Story
"This is the part of the movie where the audience
is screaming at her to turn around.
I knew it was dangerous. I went anyway because I had to know."
On a muggy June Florida night, she drove into the woods seeking out a stranger. A stranger with a song she could not forget, as if he was pulling her into his orbit. In an instant, they became inseparable as they orbited each other — leaving everything and everyone behind. What followed were years of love, chaos, and the gravity that held them together through it all — told across eight seasons, from deep in the Florida woods to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
This is the story of the cost of impossible love.
Season 1
Two minutes and forty-eight seconds. That's all it took.
Season 2
They built a house of love, laughter and music — complete with their own Hobbit House. It was magical until it wasn't. Crumbling under the lies holding them together.
Season 3
Living on sacred tribal land behind a flea market, they soon involve themselves with the market ecosystem — until a Category 5 hurricane threatens to destroy everything.
Season 4
Squatting in paradise with sandcastle dreams. The season that healed them — until it became a nightmare.
Season 5
The most dangerous place no one ever wants to live in, and the hardest to escape.
Season 6
They thought they'd found their patrons. What they found was a new kind of captivity.
Season 7
Twelve stairs. One impossible decision she couldn't pull off.
Season 8
Living in the orbit she cannot escape.
Read
Metaphor
One more flight and I wouldn't be there anymore.
The man I fell for all those years ago was nowhere around.
Now's the time, Deborah. No turning back.
The ring he'd made me, now pulled from my finger, mocked me from the nightstand.
Don't go.
The glass door to the balcony, with my half-finished turtle painting begging for completion.
Don't go.
And the keyboard, untouched for so long — silencing the colors that once sprang from his hands straight into my soul.
Still needing me to lead us back.
Stay.
In Florida, we braced for storms.
He warned me to fear the aftermath.
I feared it now.
The hurricane taught us we could endure anything together.
How was I going to endure without him?
He couldn't stand to see me afraid.
I was.
I couldn't stand to witness his pain.
How could I do this to us?
When the skies cleared, we always found refuge in each other.
What had become of him — that bold, irreverent fearless genius?
What happened to the poet?
What became of me, who worshipped him?
Twelve stairs.
Six.
Three more.
And I was gone.
From Episode 1
Selected passages
The ignition lasted two minutes and forty-eight seconds.
The colors hit me as the music pulled me into the second verse.
Purple crashed in first, thick and violent. Black clouds surged behind it, blotting out everything ordinary. Gold threads ripped through the dark. White flashes seared, blinding.
Then the words.
If it is written in the stars
And we both know who we are
In this time and space of ours
And it's gonna get us far, so far.
— Jam Jones, Get to Know
I stopped the track.
Rewound.
Listened again.
He turned his back on all of us. Sat down at the piano. Hit the opening chord.
Something in the way she moves...
No band. No production. Just Brian and the piano. Stripped down and breathtaking. With his back turned, I could just soak it in — the sound of him with no noise. I dared not move or breathe. Was that for me? Or part of his performance? I decided to believe it was all for me.
I watched Brian's tail lights disappear into the woods.
I started my car.
Picked up the phone.
Called Adam.
And started my campaign to bring Brian back.
The Writing
"I am a rabid narcissist. Keep reading. I will prove it." — A brutally honest exploration of how love, fear, and pain can transform even the most empathetic person into the thing they fear most.
"Here is what nobody tells you about leaving: when you are the one who walks away, you are not allowed to grieve." — On the ten-year anniversary of the night it all began.
I missed you today. And that's nothing new. I missed you yesterday And will tomorrow too. I still reach for my phone When I have news Even knowing I can't send it to you. I close my eyes to see your smile There's a special place it's lived for a while. I traveled far up the mountain to find some peace Thinking memories of us would simply release But my heart brought you here It didn't care to escape So I keep your memory everywhere. I missed you today. Because now it's the fire. So I let it burn Because the flames you gave me Still inspire. They say let you go But I never will You made me shine I'm shining still. I miss you today. And that's fine with me. Keeping you close Has set me free. The gifts you gave I keep them safe Follow me into the dark You light the way.
Coming Soon
The full story, read aloud by the author. Chapter by chapter. Subscribe to be the first to hear it.
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About the Author
Deborah performs having it together. During the day she closes deals, manages chaos, holds everything in place. At night when the wine is poured and the house goes quiet, she writes. She has been what everyone required her to be for so long she almost forgot what she requires for herself.
Single mother of four. Two divorces. A high-performing executive in a corporate world she privately despises. Introverted and artsy in a world that keeps telling her those things are a waste of her real talent. She writes in the dark when everyone is sleeping.
The Poet's Song is a nine-book memoir series spanning a decade of love, sacrifice, and survival — with the ultimate goal of becoming an episodic television series. It is all true. It is all hers.
She is also the author of The Attention Principle, and her essays have been published in Elephant Journal with nearly 30,000 reads.
Follow the Story
"I believe the best way to get over anything is to become undeniable — the person you became because of it."
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Even darkness deserves to shine.