Ending a friendship with someone you expected to be in your life forever can be hard, especially when it is someone you thought was going to be your bridesmaid in the future or someone your kids would consider their aunt. There’s always a little hope that it’ll work out and they will change their ways, but they won’t, and deep down you know that. You hold onto the friendship for the memories or because you know the things about their life that no one else knows, but that doesn’t obligate you to stay.
Leaving a toxic friendship felt impossible to me. It took me all of high school to accept that the toxic friendships weren’t worth saving. However, it wasn’t until graduation that I knew I was willing to cut all ties with most of my friend group because of the toxicity that surrounded us. Now, with that being said, I hold the accountability that there were situations I fed into, but that also does not excuse the actions or things that were said. I was made to seem like the bad guy and was always the one apologizing even when I knew that it wasn’t my fault, and I couldn’t have done anything to stop it. Gaslighting became excessive and the dread of seeing them became too much. Never being allowed to vocalize my own thoughts or being pulled into an argument over having an “attitude” while being sick was just too exhausting. In the end, the lies, insults, negative energy, the breaking of trust, and the effort I was putting in – it just all wasn’t worth it. It became clear that these friends didn’t want me to succeed. It was a time where I wasn’t sure who to turn to. I decided it was best for my mental well-being to leave the friendships behind. It wasn’t something I wanted, and I spent countless hours being sad and feeling insanely lonely, knowing that they were spinning the story and making it seem like I had been in the wrong. It took me months after cutting communication to finally remove them on Snapchat and delete their number from my phone.
It all really started with ignoring texts and Snapchats until those notifications stopped coming, since having the conversation about boundaries hadn’t worked. Then, it was not reacting to what I was hearing from other people; just letting it stop there rather than feeding into it. Next was unfollowing, un-adding, and deleting old text messages as well as cutting all other contact. I was accepting that these people were no longer a part of my life and that I was allowed to fully become my own person without them or their input.
Since cutting ties, once the initial sadness was over, I have never been better. I strengthened friendships that had suffered due to the negativity. Taking those two people out of my life made me realize how happy I could be for myself without being made to feel bad for things going well. Real friends celebrate your wins, not make you feel bad just because they think that you don’t deserve it. I noticed that it was okay to be happy for myself. My confidence, relationship, friendships, and mental state all got better once I stepped away from the people who had dragged me down for so long.
After realizing that the toxicity doesn’t just go away on its own and making myself happy is much more important, I became an overall better person not only for myself, but for those around me as well. Holding on to relationships that were negative really only brought me down and caused me to close off to those around me. I learned that it was okay to not want to be around someone and that I did not need to come up with an excuse for it. I no longer feel guilty for standing up for myself and I even find myself picking up on those traits that were the problem in the past to avoid any more damage. Ending the friendships that brought me down for so long truly was the hardest, yet most freeing, thing I had ever had to do.