The Child Beneath the Quiet

I learned to hear the weather in a face,
To know when silence meant the storm was near;
A child can turn a hallway into space,
And make a home of watching out for fear.
The room would change because one voice was loud,
One shadow claimed the furniture and air;
I learned to make myself both small and proud,
As if no wound could find me hiding there.
I studied every tightening of the jaw,
The sudden cold that entered through a glance;
I called it love because I had no law,
But love should never make a child advance.
I begged for praise the way the thirsty plead,
A single word to prove that I was real;
Then blamed myself for every buried need,
And learned to doubt the things I dared to feel.
There was no middle ground inside that place,
You were a saint until you caused offense;
Then mercy vanished from the human face,
And innocence was treated as defense.
I carried that old courtroom in my head,
Into the arms of anyone I knew;
I sought approval like a starving bread,
And feared the door each time a loved one withdrew.
The body keeps a record of the night,
It flinches at a tone, a slammed-up door;
It reads a harmless silence as a fight,
And stands prepared for what is gone no more.
I do not call the damage destiny,
Nor make the past a throne on which to stay;
The wound explains the frightened parts of me,
It does not get to choose my every day.
I name the lie that said I had no worth,
I see the borrowed voice beneath my own;
It came from someone damaged long before,
But I refuse to make that damage stone.
Forgiveness is not saying it was right,
Nor washing clean the harm that left its mark;
It is the choice to set the burden light,
And stop mistaking suffering for dark.
I turn to knowledge, patience, breath, and truth,
To what is mine: my judgment and my will;
I cannot give the lost man back his youth,
But I can teach the child inside be still.
Some nights he wakes when old impressions burn,
And asks why love was sharpened into blame;
I hold him close and tell him we will learn:
The fire was real, but we are not its flame.
The past wrote chapters in a brutal hand,
Its ink ran deep through memory and bone;
Yet here I stand, still learning how to stand,
No longer asking monsters for a home.
I keep the scar, not as a god or chain,
But as a map that shows how far I came;
The child still cries beneath the adult pain,
But now he hears me speak his truer name.
…

DCG

Narcissists are envious of others, but they mask their envy as respect or admiration in an attempt to obtain what they need from someone who they, in fact, envy. They can feign being very accommodating and appreciative if they believe that you can serve them in some way.
Narcissists are deficient in the capacity to feel gratitude towards others. They are convinced they don’t need others, so they perceive needing others as a sign of weakness. Due to their empathy deficits, they have little to no capacity to care for others, to share with others, or to love others.
Narcissists believe that by nature, they are better and superior human beings. They hold high views of themselves, even if those views are in stark contrast with their reality. They like to be in charge, and they believe themselves to be competent even when they aren’t. They overestimate their attractiveness even when others don’t find them attractive or appealing. They believe themselves to be brilliant, even when their IQ scores prove otherwise. They exaggerate their talents and achievements, even when they don’t have anything substantial to show for them.
And because of all this, narcissists look down on and dehumanize others. Narcissists cannot tolerate when things are not perfect, and because nothing is ever perfect in reality, they don’t believe that anything or anyone is good enough for them. This is why they don’t value fidelity and loyalty, and they have no problem betraying others.
Narcissists psychologically block out other people when they are talking to them and relating to them as if they are really just talking to a mirror. When the mirror does not reflect back exactly what they want, which it never can in reality, they become irritated or enraged. This is why they cannot tolerate being challenged, disagreed with, or insufficiently admired.
Narcissists are emotionally impulsive and can lash out when they experience negative emotions, but not always overtly. They project their negative emotions onto others, which causes the recipient of their lash-outs to experience the narcissist’s negativity almost as a physical blow. They also possess an uncanny ability to extract good feelings from those who get caught in their drama.
Narcissists don’t relate to people unless the person they relate to serves a particular purpose for them. They are highly insufficient at collaborating and cooperating with others. Narcissists only use people for their own one-sided purposes and needs.
Narcissists are responsibility avoiders. They deny their part in any conflict or problem. They lie constantly, both deliberately and automatically, and they prematurely quit and give up on tasks, jobs, relationships, and responsibilities that don’t perfectly mirror their idealized views or sufficiently provide for their selfish needs.
Narcissists are exploitative, controlling, demanding, oppositional, manipulative, parasitic, and threatening. They may use blackmail and other coercive tactics to force people to submit to their needs and desires, and they have a high potential for verbal and physical violence when they don’t get what they want. Their sole purpose for entering into relationships with others is to ensure that some desirable result happens for them and them alone.
Narcissists are thoughtless, insensitive, and uncaring towards others. They feel entitled to treat people any way they want and discard them when they are no longer sufficiently providing for their needs. They truly believe they are special and superior to everyone else, and because of this, they make exceptions for themselves related to social and relational standards and rules that everyone else willingly accepts and abides by. They do not value or believe in equality.
Narcissists are limited to dichotomous thinking because they are rigid and inflexible thinkers. Thoughts are all or nothing, good or bad, right or wrong, with no gray area and no middle ground. With narcissists, this dichotomy always works in their favor. For example, the narcissist is always right and innocent, and everyone else is always wrong and always to blame.
Contrary to popular belief, narcissists actually feel a broad range of emotions. However, their impulsivity, heightened arousal, and lack of self-regulating capacity [result] in dramatic, ineffective escalations rather than normal expressions of feelings and internal states.”

Domain Commonly described traits
Self-view Exaggerated sense of importance; overstating achievements or talents; expecting recognition as superior without matching accomplishments
Fantasy and status Preoccupation with fantasies of exceptional success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love; belief that one is special and should associate only with high-status or “special” people
Admiration Strong or excessive need for praise, validation, attention, or admiration
Entitlement Expecting unusually favorable treatment, compliance, privileges, or exceptions
Interpersonal style Using or exploiting others to pursue personal goals; arrogant, haughty, or condescending manner
Empathy Difficulty recognizing, appreciating, or responding to other people’s feelings and needs
Envy Envying others or assuming that others are envious of them

These are the nine standard DSM-derived traits as summarized in clinical and medical sources.[msdmanuals +2]
Important distinctions
“Narcissism” is often used casually, but the literature distinguishes between traits and a disorder.
• Narcissistic traits can occur on a spectrum. Someone may crave approval, be status-conscious, boast, or react badly to criticism without meeting criteria for NPD.
• NPD requires a persistent, inflexible, cross-situational pattern that affects functioning and relationships; a professional diagnosis considers the person’s history, context, and overall psychological functioning.[mayoclinic +1]
• A person can behave manipulatively, lie, betray trust, be abusive, or show black-and-white thinking without having NPD. Those behaviors are serious on their own terms, but they do not establish a diagnosis.
• Conversely, people with NPD are not all outwardly flamboyant or obviously self-confident. Clinical discussion often distinguishes more openly grandiose presentations from vulnerable presentations marked by shame, insecurity, sensitivity to criticism, and defensiveness.[clevelandclinic +1]
Where the clip aligns—and overreaches
The clip overlaps with recognized themes when it mentions grandiosity, entitlement, envy, interpersonal exploitation, difficulty with empathy, and sensitivity to disagreement or insufficient admiration. Those ideas broadly resemble elements in the DSM-based clinical picture.[msdmanuals +2]
But it goes beyond psychology literature when it asserts that narcissists:
• Have “little to no capacity” to care, share, or love
• “Lie constantly”
• Have no loyalty or fidelity
• Always view people only as tools
• Have a high potential for violence
• Are uniformly incapable of cooperation or gratitude
Those are absolute moral claims, not diagnostic criteria. Contemporary clinical discussion also cautions against the blanket claim that people with narcissism have no empathy; empathy may be limited, inconsistent, self-focused, or selectively expressed.[clevelandclinic +1]
A careful plain-English summary
A literature-grounded formulation would be:

Narcissistic personality pathology involves an unstable or inflated sense of self-importance, a heavy reliance on admiration or status for self-esteem, entitlement, and recurring difficulty with mutuality and empathy in relationships. The outward presentation may be boastful and domineering, or more vulnerable and criticism-sensitive. Diagnosis requires a durable pattern across contexts, not an isolated behavior or secondhand account.[msdmanuals +2]