iLiza's eyes

This is the theme of my week: toxic people are like toxic drugs.

Toxic people are like toxic drugs: they can only become toxic once they're part of our beings, and they somehow feel good and addictive even as they eat us away.

I've been having moments of clarity this week about the harmful people in our lives, those individuals who make us hurt, but who we seem so afraid to let go of. And why? I wonder, because the people who hurt us the most seem to be those who we fear losing most strongly. Those that really need to leave are those who we really want to stay.

I wonder why we destroy ourselves this much. Perhaps it's in the hope of change, that one more day or week or year will improve the situation, for it's scary to release something that hasn't yet reached its full potential. Or maybe it's because many of us always want to see the good, and so we use that potential for good as an excuse for the overwhelming bad. Maybe it's because we blame ourselves: we see that this person is only toxic to us and so blame ourselves for the harm, because it certainly can't be them.

But here's the thing: we're all poisonous if we get under the skin of the wrong person at the wrong time. And so the point is that toxicity is not about the toxic person, toxicity is about the victim. Toxic people are like toxic drugs: we choose to swallow them down, even if it feels like we can't help it.

And we choose to put up with people and make excuses for them and sacrifice our own good for the sake of their potential. We choose to succumb to the poison because it's too scary to think of the detox. But here's a secret following my moments of clarity this week: the fear of what's beyond is worse than what's actually there. The fear is paralyzing but the detox is painless. And no one changes unless they really want to.

I often use the band-aid analogy when I talk about ridding ourselves of people that are less than good for us or breaking up with boyfriends or girlfriends. I remember being young whenever I think of it, having a cut on my leg that was covered with a band-aid until it was finally time to take the smelly, itchy thing off. I remember crying at the pain as I slowly tore it away from each little peach-fuzzy hair and howling with the fear of ripping another follicle apart. And I remember my grandmother telling me to just rip the damn thing off and get it over with.

To this day I'm still bad at ripping band-aids off, but I'm getting better at throwing bad relationships away. Toxic friends are like toxic drugs which are like smelly band-aids covering healed skin: the scariest part is the prospect of losing it, of each day exploding apart, the howling fear of detox, and the easy part is just ripping the damn thing off.

posted by iliza @ 3:33 PM