Note: The title is a reference to “Toxic” by Britney Spears ;)
A best friend is your ride or die. They are someone who checks up on you when you haven’t been very social; they are the one who stalks your social media to make sure you’re okay and don’t seem off. Whenever you’re with them you are never upset and even when you are, you are never afraid to speak your mind or tell them the truth. Some people might have one, others might have a group of best friends. It doesn’t matter how many you have, as long as they support you and you support them and you allow each other to grow.
When it comes to friendship, there are always ups and downs no matter what. When the ups happen, you celebrate with one another, but when the downs happen, you talk it out. What you don’t do is hide it or be petty and post something on social media. You don’t blame it on one person, because I can guarantee if something is wrong in the friendship…it is not one-sided. You talk things out instead of pressing that unfollow button first. After many pointless fights and petty actions, it gets to a breaking point where you finally realize that this person isn’t a friend and you’ve gotten yourself into a toxic friendship.
When one thinks of a toxic relationship, they probably think of one between two lovers, but toxic friendships are just as common and hurt just as much. You will know it’s a toxic friendship if you always take the blame for every fight you’ve had. Or when you get called conceited when you talked about your problems too much to your “best friend” by your best friend…yeah that happened. Because of that, you stop opening up. You start to feel like you can’t be your true self and you’re always thinking about what to say before you say anything because you don’t want to upset your friend.
It’s not healthy or normal for someone to go long periods of time ignoring you, let alone your best friend. It’s not healthy when they post petty stuff indirectly targeting you or when they blame you for something that didn’t meet their expectations. It’s not healthy to wonder what is wrong with you as a human after the 10th complaint of paying more attention to your other friends than to them. It’s not okay to be unfollowed, ignored and ghosted by your so-called “best friend”. Never once did they apologize or admit they were wrong in any way.
After a while it becomes exhausting and you need to learn to let go. Sometimes being civil is more than enough. If they aren’t willing to talk things out before taking action, they don’t care about the friendship at all. You have to realize the problem might not be fixable.
Say goodbye to being so damn dependent on someone while trying to constantly make them happy to the point where you have to sacrifice your own happiness. Say hello to the person who is staring back at you in the mirror because that’s the only person you need to hold on to.
Toxic friendships are a lot more common than you think. When it gets to the point where you are afraid of standing up for yourself to your “best friend”, you need to walk away. Saying goodbye to a friendship is hard, but learning who you are and who you can be is way better than staying in an unhealthy relationship.
As you release yourself from these unhealthy relationships, you will realize who your real best friends are. They are the ones who genuinely care and understand you. They check up on you when you post or retweet something “off” on social media. They know something is wrong when you are more quiet than usual or when you don’t talk out your feelings like you used to. I am happy to say that my best friends are the ones who have my back, they’re the girls I had in high school and still do today. I even made more best friends in college, they check up on me when I am off or acting quieter than usual. They brought me out of my comfort zone on a whole other level. We grow with each other and become better each day. They always have my back and give the best advice. These girls helped me get through a toxic friendship, that to be quite honest, I should not have put up with for as long as I did. But still, my girls supported me through it all and are here for me at the end of the day.
Everything that was mentioned in the first and last paragraph is what a best friend should be like. It’s okay to reminisce about the happy moments from your toxic friendships, but it’s time to move on and enjoy who you are now with the people who care about you the most.