Toxicity

In yesterday’s post I talked a lot about how I am not subscribing to the teacher of Jealousy anymore. In that I am making a commitment not to subscribe to the idea that just because someone else has something, I should need to want it too.

Today I want to talk about all the people who think I should be jealous of them…it kind of sucks to be you. I sort of feel sorry for those of you who are out there in the world being mean for the sake of being mean, because you clearly don’t understand love.

All of my past friendships and relationships were murdered by jealousy and feelings of guilt and shame. All of them ended badly, and in some cases, with violence. People I loved are no longer a part of my life and it’s not entirely their fault.

I am just as guilty of being jealous and manipulative, I am not perfect I have made a lot of mistakes, and I am genuinely sorry for that, but I think a bit part of the reason I was in the situations I was in, was largely because of how much toxicity I was living with.

I was feeling so stressed all the time, worrying about what I wore and what my nails looked like, at first it was in an effort to fit in, but then it became about keeping up, and you can’t have real genuine relationships when you’re trying to keep up with people who have literally nothing in common with you, except for the need to remain in toxic situations.

And it is a need, it’s a cloying overpowering need that drains the life from you and makes you feel older than you should, long before you’re ready to deal with what is coming at you.

That lifestyle, the lifestyle of trying to keep up can and often does literally kill your spirit, and it steals all the joy from your life, so why would you want to live that way?

Largely I think it’s that we don’t even realize we’re doing it. I think it becomes an automatic need to survive among “the pretty people”, so ingrained into who we are, that we forget who we wanted to be, we lose ourselves in the darkness.

It becomes easy, to let the costume become the reality, and I did that for a long time. I was so busy trying to keep the secrets of how many times I’d been raped, so busy not talking about it, that my costume became my reality.

It’s no wonder that these days, when I am so focused on myself, on finding my true self, that I am fucking exhausted. It’s absolutely utterly exhausting pretending to be something that you’re not.

Lately I am finding that it’s becoming impossible to be anything but myself, there is a certain amount of anxiety and stress that comes with being me, but that being said it’s at least authentic. It comes from a place of knowing what I’ve been through and how bad things can get before I break away from the toxic cycle.

I put my hand to the fucking stove element and gave myself a third degree burn, I don’t want to make that same mistake again. Which means now I am dealing with trusting people, I am dealing with choosing not to do things that I don’t fucking want to do. I am learning to say yes, but I am also learning to say no.

Life gets a lot different when you leave toxicity behind, you start to see the world with brand new eyes. You begin to find your place in the chaos that is this universe, and you begin to understand that the petty shit no longer matters.

I will probably never see my former friends again, but I will almost always think of them fondly, because no matter how bad things got, there was a time we were closer to each other than we were to our own families.

I am at peace today, and that’s all I can ask for.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall