Waving Goodbye To Toxic Relationships

The world has been flipped on its head this past year. One day we had the freedom to go out, sit indoors, hug our friends and get covered in sweat at raves. Then the next, we were stuck indoors trying to figure out ways to waste another day away. A change as drastic as that is bound to change you.

Boris Johnson always talks about how the children are the worse affected by lockdown, but I don't think that's really the case. The ones in their 20's, leaving University and looking for work with no real-world experience, trying to move out of the family home and reclaim their independence. These people are the ones really suffering from lockdowns and the COVID crisis; our lives are officially on hold at the point where we are meant to settle down, find love, and start in a career that we'll probably be in for the rest of our lives.

It's weird to think that I'll come out of lockdown in a completely different mental space and life journey. I was living in Wolverhampton, working at a social media agency in Birmingham, seeing a guy who was a bit of a nutter. Now I'm living in London, working in a software company, and building something pretty significant for myself. I know I made the right choice in life moving down south, but so much has changed along the way. I've lost friends, come to terms that they weren't the people I grew up with. In this blog, I'll be talking about waving goodbye to toxic relationships in COVID.

When you're amid a toxic relationship/friendship, you never quite realise it. Hurt feelings just a joke that you took personally (it's not their fault you're delicate). But, despite the pain and the agro, breaking up with a toxic person can be just as hard as saying goodbye to a significant other. When someone you trust constantly belittles you, tears you down, or makes you feel like you don't deserve respect, then that person has to go. Now.

unsplash-image-cnsuw8UtH_E.jpg

There's a part of me who still misses the friends I had before COVID. The chill drinks, messy nights out, and the family dynamic we'd created in University. We'd all been through so much together. But throughout lockdown, you could see them change on our weekly zoom calls. They aged became bitter, and the veil of solidarity fell. These weren't the girls who had caused havoc with me on nights out, helped me get free drinks off freshers.

But getting rid of the negativity is easier said than done, isn't it? One afternoon, you make up your mind and decide to phase them out, and the next, you find yourself lending them books, makeup, or ordering food.

With the recent goodbye to my toxic friendships, a comment was made in my direction, and any feelings I had for them flickered out like a light. I'd been slowly getting sick of the fake attitudes and toxicity, but the side comment was the final straw for me. I stopped messaging them and interacting with them on any level apart from being there. I knew I'd get kicked off if I threw a tantrum, and I'm frankly too tired for the screaming matches anymore. So I effectively ghosted them; they weren't bringing any happiness to the relationship, only sourness. Long story short, people were blocked, phones went silent, and the remaining fractions of the friendship were asked to pick aside.

It's sad to see friendships die that way: it feels almost impossible that you can experience total platonic love and devotion for someone - and then, abruptly, realise that you didn't know them at all. Your friendship was an absolute lie, a way to make them feel more affluent, to soothe their ego when anyone tried to call them the exact words that are floating in your own head now.

When friendships end, as they often do, I get a wave of self-doubt. This isn't the first time I've lost touch with a close friend; perhaps it's the first friendship that's ended violently. The others just fizzle out as we grow. I've had several lovely lifelong friendships (the ones that matter stays around), but my life has been peppered by intense companies that ended like long-term relationships.

Women don't talk as much about those kinds of toxic, temporary friendships. Instead, we like to romanticise them, idealise enduring sisterhood as the norm - like Thelma and Louise driving off the cliff together, to hell with men, just them against the world.

We idealise the notion because it's the only one we want to believe. But the truth is that many friendships have something festering under the surface - some resentment, fear of inequality, or just the inevitable annoyance that comes with spending insane amounts of time with another human being. Nevertheless, healthy friendships look past these flaws or work through them as a unit.

Looking back at my friendship with the girls, I can see how unhealthy it was, how I overlooked the troubling signs of imbalance in the name of friendship. There was one, who wanted nobody to challenge her "Alpha status" and dismantled the reputation of those who challenged it. She weeded her way into friendship groups, aimed to be the dominant member. She did various things; to be honest, some are not my story to tell; if there were, I would.

I'm not going to beat myself up for not seeing this coming. It's not the first friendship drama, and it probably won't be the last. But, looking through pictures of the girls and me, even the way they carry themselves in the photos is different. Something changed in the dynamic of our friendship during the lockdown. It's sad to put those good times and memories to bed in my head. But I'm absolutely not sad about the outcome. I've been around the block too many times to deal with negativity. As I work towards a better life, the last thing I need is people pulling me down with trivial drama and nonsense.

But at the same time, I don't know if I regret either of these friendships, no matter how painful and confusing the fallouts were. I approach friendship now with a grain of understanding that this may all be temporary and that a forever friendship can't be assumed, no matter how close I may feel to my girlfriends.

I used to worry that I'm the toxic friend, but I know I haven't done anything wrong or cause grief. I've done my own thing, I've put positive energy out into the world, and since that friendship ended, I've received positive energy back from others.

Losing friends is normal. It’s apart of our life journey and I don’t think anyone reading this blog post can say they’re still friends with every person they’ve ever come across. We need to normalise removing toxic people from our lives and focusing on being better people. The girls this obscenely long rant is about probably think I’m the toxic one, and that’s okay.

Yeah, rant over.