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As we grow up, we learn that we are going to come across numerous people in our lives. While some of these people are perhaps going to stick with us, some have other destinations.
Do we even remember those friends with whom we finished kindergarten? Some of us are probably lucky enough to still be friends with them. But some of us are not lucky enough.
Because some of us have made the mistake of trusting people. Of thinking that everyone we are going to meet is a friend.
From Best of Friends to a Very Bad Memory
Can we all agree on the fact that we meet the best of friends after we are through with school? It was after my +2 that I became friends with a group of a few people who turned out to be extraordinary at first.
Going out every day, having heartfelt conversations, boozing, discovering new places and new emotions. It’s a joy ride of many first time experiences.
Why do we feel like something is wrong when it is a little late to go back? After around six months of staying in that group, I gradually got to know these people at a personal level. And the more I got to know about them, the more it made me feel bad about myself, and my poor choice of friends. Can good memories make up for bad people? I still don’t know.
No matter how much one reads about the ways in which to identify toxic people, we certainly have our definition of toxicity.
Also Read: “The More Time I Spend Around My Parents, The More I Realise How Toxic They Are For Me”: What I Learned About Toxicity
Toxic. Venomous. Poisonous.
Someone who makes you feel bad about yourself. Someone who makes you feel less confident about yourself and more uncomfortable. Someone around whom you can’t be yourself. Someone who does not and cannot understand you. Someone who manipulates you.
These things may not always be the case. However, I believe we must have the freedom to walk out of a friendship or relationship we do not like, regardless of whether it is a toxic relationship or not.
So, after six months of not knowing these people, I got to know them. I got to know that a person was cheating on their partner with all that they had. They could simply walk out of the relationship, but refused.
They decided to cheat, yet. And their partner knew about it all, and went through a mentally and sometimes physically abusive relationship, and decided to stay because their partner had promised a future together when they were in high school.
Why should that affect someone on a personal level? I mean, two adults handling their relationship however they see fit, right? As it so happened, the person involved in this context cheated on their partner with my friend.
My friend was non-consensually kissed by this person and went through some abuse for a considerable amount of time.
The person’s partner knew about this as well, yet decided to carry on with the relationship. When I went to defend my friend, the person and their partner ganged up against me and started playing victims. Thankfully, I was able to get my friend out of the entire picture. It was my fault because I was the one who had introduced them to this toxic group.
A freak-show right? It gets more uncomfortable.
Climax of Toxicity
It was after a few months had passed that I met the partner of that person. We had stopped meeting because I had suffered extensive mental pressure around their presence.
So, the partner asked me to help them reach the person because they had stopped talking. I helped.
“Please talk to your partner. I met them today. They are in very poor health,” I had texted.
The person asked me to meet them after a few days. They said that they were done with the relationship and that they were seeing someone new.
After I said this to the person’s partner, I started getting blackmailed by the person. The person had some political influence, and it was used against me. It got so bad that I was even suggested to talk to the police.
A few days later, lots of people called that person out on social media. Hundreds of screenshots of chats were floating around where the person was caught giving rape threats, manipulating other people, blackmailing them. And the funny thing was, their partner still went on defending them.
I don’t even understand why or how it got so bad, and why or how I got myself so badly involved. Truth is definitely stranger than fiction. In fiction, everything is justified. Truth does not require that.
What to Learn
It’ll be bad and wrong if I say anything about staying around people who make us feel certain things. It’s our life and no one ever should have a say in it.
But I believe it is always wise to get to know people first and then decide whether we want to be with them or not. It’s good to take our time. It’s good to engage in deep conversations even though that might sometimes feel awkward. Everything’s better than two months of pretending and two years of repenting, right?
Some of the events have been fictionalized, but the context has not been meddled with. Toxicity is real. Toxic people are real. And we have to be mature enough to break the relationships we don’t like.
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Connect with the Blogger: Debanjan Dasgupta
This post is tagged under: toxic, relationship, psychology, friendship, toxic relationship, relational psychology, adulthood, friends, bad, good, blackmail, negative, negativity, booze, abuse, mental, trauma, physical abuse
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