NPD Theater - The Protagonist of Sand

Act I: The Dark Theater and the Young Actor

The stage floor smells of dry wood.
A single beam of light falls from above, highlighting only my silhouette.
In the audience, there is only one person: my parent.
Their face is sunken in shadow, and their expression is unreadable.
There is no applause, nor any sigh.
Only the temperature of the air grows slightly colder.

"If things continue like this, I will be taken off the stage..."

When I walk to the edge of the stage, the floorboards end, and beyond that, sand stretches out.
The wind whips up fine grains of sand that sting my cheeks.
Beyond that, there is nothing.

There is no voice calling my name, not even a shadow.
As a child, I called that desert 'the place where I disappear.'

Act II: Obtaining the Lead Role

One day, the light became a little softer.
My parent's mouth moved ever so slightly.
I will never forget that moment.

The role I played was the one my parent desired.
The honor student, the funny child, the reliable child—
None of these were me, but the light certainly grew warmer.

There was no sound of applause, but that silence was not a silence of rejection.
That was enough.
As long as I could stay on stage, I could become anything.

Act III: The Never-Ending Stage

At some point, the lights stopped going out.
Even when I retreat to the wings, I can see the desert through the gaps in the floorboards.
The hot wind blowing from there shakes the darkness of the wings.

The wings are not a place to rest.
They are a narrow shadow just before the desert.
I felt that if I stayed too long, I would be dragged into the sand.

So, I return to the boards.
As long as I continue the role, the desert will not draw near.
That is what I believed.

Act IV: The Prison Called Theater

Time passed, and the audience seats filled with people.
They are not my parent's face, but they possess the same silence and gaze.
Instead of applause, evaluations and rumors fly about.
I swallow them, choose my lines, and refine my gestures.

If someone tries to remove the stage boards,
I spit out defensive lines and force them to follow the script.
The lead role has been protected.

However, the path to leave the stage has also been closed off.

The desert still sends its wind from beyond the boards.

Commentary

The defenses and lack of empathy that NPD individuals display in daily life are not evidence of coldness. They are the result of an endless state of survival formed in childhood. The stage is set in a place where the only water of life exists. The desert outside is a world where memories of parental indifference, denial, and rejection are condensed, signifying the erasure of existence. Even as adults, those with NPD cannot step off this stage. The hypervigilance, invisible to others, exists because the worldview that 'outside the stage is a desert' is firmly fixed deep within their hearts.

Afterword

Since it was difficult to describe the inner state of NPD through explanatory prose, I used literary expressions this time. I hope this helps readers visualize the inner world of NPD, even if only a little. Furthermore, the structure of this story shares a worldview similar to Kobo Abe's 'The Woman in the Dunes.' The bizarre daily life of being forced into a role within a closed house of sand, and the strange coexistence formed with the woman within it—the figure of the 'other' co-starring with the lead in the NPD theater overlaps with the protagonist trapped in the house of sand. In this article, I intentionally wove in a Kobo Abe-esque atmosphere to depict the suffocating nature of this psychological structure.