I can’t keep lying to myself anymore about who I truly am. I can’t keep hiding within the closet and yet blaming everyone else for my own decisions and inability to own up to who I am….. this is me coming out to myself and to the world as a TOXIC FRIEND. I hope by sharing my experience it helps you as well identify if you could probably be a toxic friend as well.

For as long as I have ever known myself, I’ve never being one to keep long term friendships. I would be with one friend or circle for some time mad the next time you see me I’m with a totally new group of people. And for a while I never saw anything wrong with that, after all they were the ones speaking negatively / lying about me or just doing random things that would piss me off and make me decide to cut them off and never talk to them again. It was like that through secondary school, I had troubles with literally most of the people I came in contact with. Hence,my happiness when I finally left to uni with the intention of starting anew.

It was alright the first week of university and then it started, the troubles with my roommates,my resentment for them ,my refusal to talk to anyone who “hurt” me until they apologised to me (whether or not they knew why I was angry). I just assumed they were all negative and toxic,so when the next semester came I was happy to start over with a new set of roommates but it presented with its same troubles such as; been taken advantage of,been gossiped about, basically been insulted and bodyshamed etc just made my resentment grow and my decision to do things just to purposely annoy them.

This went on until the next year and I finally got new roommates but alas my old demons found me soon after, and I cut them off and stopped talking to them for a paltry reason of “not wishing me well after I had passed an exam they knew meant so much to me”, they asked what they had done but I didn’t know how to reveal how something so small could mean so much to me so I stonewalled them.

And soon enough they gave me the same treatment but this time it would get worse with the name calling or side comments or purposely doing things to annoy me(whether they knew it annoyed me I’ll never know), turning friends against me and just blatantly insulting me when I was around or when their friends were around and soon enough because I couldn’t speak up for myself I would rather do things back to them to annoy them. You can only imagine the catastrophe that was the room.

After the semester,I moved into a new room with new people and armed with the need to make this semester different as the new roommates all knew about my past roommates issues and some were friends with my old roommates,I decided I would prove them wrong. To cut the long story short,I began to feel like I didn’t fit in as much as I had thought in the room, I was always made to feel different and just not enough, it was like I was forcing myself to feel among and at a point I just gave up and decided it wasn’t worth it (whether or not they knew their actions had that effect on me I would never know).

During this years bear in mind I lost close friends as much I gained new ones, I stopped talking to my first year closest friends because I felt I didn’t fit into the group and that none of them really cared(as I was going through some fucked up break-up they never even knew about but somehow I expected them to comfort me).

The close friends I thought I made in second year turned out to be the worst set of friends I had made(and that’s a lot coming from me), who would jump at an opportunity to run their mouth about me negatively once I stopped associating with them(surprisingly I wasn’t unsurprised as they had bad-mouthed their other “friends” to me at different times…karma right?). My third year close friend was as good as they come but as all good things it came to an end because I felt it was an unbalanced friendship but thankfully I have been opportuned to make up for my mistake with her recently but I hope things can go back to half of what they were before, because things are just a bit odd rn between us(from my side tho).

How and when I realized I was toxic.

By the end of third year i was literally friendless and I actually decided to take a step back and analyse what exactly was going wrong.. after my first assessment I decided that I had just been unfortunate to know toxic people who didn’t care about me and were negative energy. It made me feel better to think this way,i prided myself in my false accomplishment of having cut-off the “negative and toxic energy” in my life. But even after this my life still wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows like I expected it would be. I was supposed to be truly happy but rather I had this feeling of inadequacy, loneliness,hurt, guilt and abandonment within me which I couldn’t shake off.

It took quite a while for me to realize and finally admit to the fact that my first assessment could be false after all. It was even harder to admit to myself that I could possibly be the one at fault in my failed friendships and relationship with people. It was nerve-wracking to have to admit that the common factor in all this failed friendships was ME. The entire toxic pattern led right to me …how I had failed to realize it earlier on was beyond me , because all the signs were there. I probably either chose to ignore them or was to blinded by own ego to see past what I assumed was the “toxicity of all the others.

These are the signs I ticked off that finally brought me to the realization of how toxic I really was (am);

• I was jealous; now I didn’t even know I was a jealous person until I sat down to actually evaluate myself and how I respnd to people and things around me. I could see someone doing better than me at something and it could bring me down emotionally, I begin to think of reasons why I should be doing that and be doing even better than the person. Now jealousy is one trait that is characteristic of been toxic,not been able to bear someone doing better at anything than me was just me trying to mask my own insecurities and inabilities with false anger and narratives.
• I hurt people; it is said that “hurt people hurt people” and I embodied this phrase. At every turn when I was hurt or ghosted by people I loved or trusted I did the same in turn to the people in my life. I was living in fear of been ghosted so if I think in any way that a friend would ghost (whether or not there were points to support this narrative) I would ghost the person immediately on all social media and stop all contacts with the person even physically. And believe me this was just one big vicious cycle that I couldn’t seem to break out of. In my “paranoid” fear of being hurt I hurt people who would otherwise have been great friends and great additions to my life, and I didn’t feel bad about it because I thought I was only protecting myself.
• I hate sharing; Even though I didn’t let it show, within me I knew I hated sharing the people around me both friends and boyfriends with other people. I wanted undivided attention in each and everyone of their life, I didn’t want to share them,their love or their time with people I considered “threats to our friendship”. When I would see my friends getting close to other people I would have an aching feeling like I was being replaced and I would withdraw back to my shell and begin to feel like I was an afterthought. But I realized that the truth really was that I wanted to be their one and only source of attention, support and love…and as I think about it was actually insecure and plain toxic on my part simply because I couldn’t handle another person giving and getting the same attention that I get from my friend.
• I wouldn’t communicate; my communication skills is one part of me I’ve learnt to embrace as non-existent really. I would feel a certain way about someone or something being done to me but I would rather *NOT* express my feelings on an issue for fear of conflict or been misjudged,while allowing my resentment for what that person does to eat me up inside until one day the whole pent up emotions comes pouring out in full force. And at that point I’m too angry to even coordinate what comes out of my mouth, at that point all I want is to be heard and sincerely it hardly ever ends well but just brews up even more resentment and bitterness. Basically it also stems from me feeling like I put so much effort into a friendship and I get less than what I put in or I feel like there’s no reason why as my friend you won’t know when you’re stepping on my toes with your words or actions even without me needing to say it to you. Speaking out when I want to with diplomacy and confidence is one aspect of me that quite sincerely if I had before now would have solved many if not all the issues I compounded with my lack of communication skills.
• I use people; as much as I hate to admit the fact is that I sometimes use people to get what I need or want at a particular time. Sometimes I find myself making friends at a particular place not necessarily because I plan to maintain that friendship but because at that particular place or time I need someone to either talk to to pass away time or get an information from. So that is toxic behavior because when I get what I need it becomes kindof difficult to maintain the friendship at the same rate or height it was while I still “needed” something from you.
• I cut people off; I tend to cut people off if they do not meet my personal expectations, if they do things a different way from how I like things to be done or if I don’t get what I want. I am the kind of person that really takes friendships seriously and puts in efforts in them so when I feel like the friendship is unbalanced or I’m not getting the same energy I put in,I would cut the person off. Or when I would need help from a friend and I get turned down or rejected especially when knowing that him or her could do it if they really wanted to , that hurts and would lead me to cut him or her off. But that’s just toxic behavior because as much have my own expectations and ways I like things to be done everyone cannot be like me and everyone cannot read my mind so as to know what my expectations of them are.I should learn to embrace the differences that comes with making friends rather than breaking up friendships and lashing out.
• I’m always negative; I like to think of myself as a person with a pessimistic outlook on life but really all I ever was was a negative person. I constantly complain about situations and people around me and how they could be different. But then no one wants to be around a negative person such as I am who constantly sees something wrong with everything and every situation and is always feeling bad about one thing or the other. Rather than embracing the positives of s situation I bring down people with my negative outlook.

How I plan to make changes and be less toxic.

1. Deal with the root cause of my negativity or negative outlook of a situation and find ways to be positive about myself or situations I might find myself. The fact is there’s always something positive I just have to find it and focus on it rather than ignore it and focusing on the negative.
2. I am taking small steps towards working out my communication issues, instead of waiting till all my anger is built up and boiling I would rather address the situation or person diplomatically as soon as anything happens that I feel I need to speak out on. I’ve decided to try something like this instead when something happens

“Mr_____ what happened on so and so day when you did ______,it made me feel _____ way and it would be best moving forward if you do _______ so we can avoid me feeling like _____ .

3. I will learn to embrace the differences between me and my friends rather than lashing out and trying to change them to be more like me or the image I would rather they have.

4. So far the fear of been hurt by people has done nothing but pull me back down the rumbles of the cycle of hurt. It’s valid for me to feel hurt, be scared to open up or mistrust people. But what isn’t valid is me cutting people off because of all this,no one deserves to be hurt like I was but all I’ve been doing all this time is put people right through what I did. So I will learn to give people a chance to prove themselves,it won’t always be the right choice but it’s better than losing what would have been otherwise great friendships.

5. I have to learn that I cannot be the only one pouring in love and support into my friends others also need to give them that as well. I should be less selfish, because the fact is that I can not offer them all the love they’ll ever need and I must not monopolize their attention in such a way that I feel left out without it .

6. My friendships with people shouldn’t be limited to what I think or know I can gain from them or from my association with them. Because that even a friendship but a business partnership, rather than building a friendship based on what I would gain I am learning to develop genuine friendships based on the person involved. Or rather be upfront if I need something from the person and if a friendship develops after then so be it.

I would like to use this post to apologise to anyone I’ve truly wronged with my actions and inactions as a person and as a friend. I was ignorant of just how much hurt and pain I was putting out there but that doesn’t excuse me or my past actions. There’s no better word to end this post than with;

I’m sorry.