tldr; i realized that not everybody knows how to deal with this, even in our 20s!?
If you're like me, you were lucky to learn in your early to mid-teens that it's more than okay to cut out the toxic people in your life, and that sometimes it's actually what is best. I don't think anyone ever even taught me to do that? I think I was just too impatient to deal with some of the shit being thrown at me. (If you've never had a toxic friend, maybe it was you.)
By now, we all know those toxic friends: The ones who lie about the 'crazy' situations they've been in and deny it/gaslight you when you catch them; The ones who threaten to commit suicide or slit their wrists every ten seconds when they don't get their way or when they don't want you to go to bed and stop talking to them (This one's tricky because you always want to treat it like it's serious, but all you can do is tell adults and let them handle it); A more common one is what you see in middle/high school all the time when 'friends' spread rumours, lies, or talk badly about their 'friend' behind their back and act like it wasn't them. I could literally go on, and on, and on... and don't even get me started on toxic relationships.
Maybe this isn't entirely relevant, but I'm an empath. I feel for other people in a crazier degree than non-empaths (which isn't to say a non-empath isn't empathetic), and it really fucks with my judgement sometimes. And when I finally get the balls to cut someone out of my life, I tend to beat myself up about it. I don't want them feeling worse. Did I make a mistake? Did I take something out of proportion? Maybe this was an overreaction. But how do I take it back? DO I take it back?? -- I wonder if that's what it's like for people without anxiety too (lol). What is relevant is that I'm 25 now.
I think I started filtering out the toxic when I was around 15. She was the friend who would cut if she was upset about something and threaten suicide or conjure up some story about how she attempted to, but she never did. Somehow without looking, I always found out she was lying (but I'd always believe her in the moment and keep talking her down). This lead to SO. MANY. all-nighters for me, which I'm sure affected my grades (who ever paid attention to that, lol), and most definitely my mood. Understanding now that your brain doesn't stop developing until much later, she probably helped mess up my own brain too.
(In editing this I cut out like 4 more paragraphs about her because I was getting off track. Clearly I'm still heated about this. Maybe I could do a more detailed explanation of all the toxic people I've cut out of my life since I was 15? Would anyone even care to read that? That would make it easy for me to crank out the blog posts for a while, that's for sure.)
Oh boy. Anyway...
The other day I got a Facebook message from someone I had cut out of my life, (not the same girl I mentioned above) and she was apologizing for being a piece of shit... I'm paraphrasing. I waited a while to open it, playing it cool and all, but once I did I marked it as unread again... How the hell do I respond to that? Listen, it's been NINE AND A HALF years since we stopped being friends. Truthfully I can't even remember why specifically she and I had a falling out. I remember a handful of smaller things that she did that rubbed me the wrong way leading up to it but I can't remember the catalyst.
I've learned in my 20s that you DON'T have to say that it's okay when someone apologizes to you. In the words of my two best friends, "because it can validate shitty behaviour when it isn't actually okay", basically perpetuating the cycle. Do I thank her for apologizing? Do I try and catch up? Do I make conversation about what led her to apologize in the first place? I'm nosey and genuinely curious. It feels like a 12-step program thing where she's making amends. Maybe it is?
Things like this have happened to me a few times in the last 10 years, from people who I dislike more than her and that I have had worse fallouts with, so normally I just don't respond. This is actually kind of new ground for me... It seemed super genuine and it's not like I really had any reason to decline given that I don't entirely remember what happened. I said I was happy she's in a better place now and commended her for having the balls to admit she knew what she did was wrong and apologize and move on, all very tough steps for most people to accomplish. So we're slowly catching up now. I don't think it'll ever be the same and I can't say we'll ever be like facebook friends or anything but we'll see.
xx
S
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