Saying Goodbye to a Toxic Friendship

Photo by Chris Ainsworth on Unsplash

Recently I ended a nearly ten year friendship with my best friend. It was extremely difficult to come to the realization that our friendship was not healthy and had not been healthy for quite some time now. Our friendship had become toxic. It was very painful and hurt so much when I finally took a deep breath and chose not to respond to her last text message that was filled with cruel and false accusations that in all honesty actually described herself. It was once and for all time to end the toxicity that was bringing me an incredible amount of stress, and interfering with my life.

I would have wanted nothing more than to civilly end our friendship in person, but over the past year whenever we would see one another in person it would always end up with me awkwardly remaining uncomfortably in silence, while I would be bombarded with a disrespect for my boundaries, unnecessary drama, false accusations made against me that were actually what she was guilty of doing to me, snide remarks, judgment, nasty comments about myself and my family and friends, and a complete and total disregard for my feelings and emotions. I could never muster up the courage to defend myself because anytime I would try she would yell nastily and curse at me, and it was something at the time that I simply could not handle. I felt absolutely powerless to speak up and put an end to the narcissistic abuse that I had endured for far too long by someone who was supposed to be my best friend.

Whenever I would find just a little bit of courage to attempt to speak up she would always fire at me full force because I was not allowed to respond to any words that she would speak to me, and she would actually tell me I could not talk about what I was talking about to her. She expected me to simply sit back and allow her to speak condescendingly to me about myself and my loved ones. As my best friend over the years I shared a lot with her, and she decided that it was all right to begin throwing it back in my face and reminding me how she was always there for me. My heart hurt because a true friend does not take what you told them in confidence and bring it up again to hurt you and remind you of how great they have been all of these years.

A big wake up call for me that our friendship had become toxic was when we were on our last vacation together. In a fit of anger she picked up keys and hurled them at my back full force before laughing after she did it.