I’d like to call this past year my “transitional” year. It’s been a lot of soul searching, personality changing moments all combined into 365 days. I’ve spent the last few years being toxic and surrounded by toxicity. While I’m sure no one wants to admit to being toxic, I can say that I’ve grown from it. I spent the last year broken and angry and I strive to spend next year in peace and happiness or at least working toward it further.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I put a lot of time, effort, and faith in my friendships. I either thrive or dive based on them. I don’t care much for relationships because I’ve been taught that friends will always outlast any boy who comes along. And while I’ve always known that many of my past friendships always end as well, they certainly stay around longer than any boy has. I’m more concerned with finding “my person” – my platonic soulmate. The Serena to my Blair, without the power struggle. The Meredith to my Christina, without being all dark and twisty.
My worst and best karmic relationship lasted for almost two years. She was supposed to be my mentor and big sister. I was so drawn to her because she seemed like everything I wanted to be – fun, carefree, exciting – and yet I could hardly stand who I had become, who I felt she had made me into, by the painfully drawn-out end. When I first met her, I felt like I had met the older version of who I wanted to be.
During the relationship, I did things I knew I’d regret and excused things she did, all the time. All in the hope to keep her around forever, to keep her liking me. I turned into someone that disgusts me. I weakened myself to make her feel bigger. I told myself and my friends – the ones who saw what I made myself into around her – that I was going to cut her out, over and over again to no avail. I told myself that things would get better, even as they got worse. She pushed me, pushed my boundaries, testing how far I’d go. I fell over the cliff for her, just to find out she wouldn’t do the same.
I remember when I finally ended things, we had fought all week over stupid little things. She had made me feel so small like everything that led to that point, was because of me. That everything that went wrong between us, was because of me. I was angry all the time, pissed off to no end, and for no reason. The turmoil between us had taken over my life and my judgment. I’m not saying that I place the blame solely on her. I’ve been through so many therapists that by now the saying “you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped” is embedded in my brain, and I knew part of me didn’t want to be helped. I wanted to stay in hopes of things going the way I wanted them to.
She was my hardest lesson – that you can’t love someone into loving you back and you can’t change someone who doesn’t want to change. When I think back, she showed me who she was and I had ignored the signs. I don’t regret the lesson she gave me, I regret how long and how much of me it took to learn it.
When she called me a few months ago, apologizing for choosing someone else over me and thinking she could have us both, I knew the emotional ties had been cut. I didn’t care for her apology, which was lacking in sincerity. I knew it was because she had done the same thing to another girl, who had been smarter and got out sooner. Part of me regrets not being able to stop her from hurting someone the way she hurt me, but I’ll always be grateful that she taught me to value myself.