Burning Bridges

Toxic People. They are everywhere and they can be anyone. Anyone at all. Sometimes they're friends, family, even a spouse or a boyfriend/girlfriend. They aren't easy to live with, in fact they can be outright impossible to live with or even be around, but we put up with them. Why? Why do we put up with people that absolutely suck the life out of us? When we meet new people and don't hit it off, we have no problem cutting them out and forgetting about them...so why is it so hard to get rid of people who make us miserable? We put up with friends who pressure us to do things we don't want, who make us feel bad if we say no to something or even the ones who are nowhere in sight when we need them, but god forbid we aren't there when they need us. We keep toxic parents in our lives and let them bully, guilt trip, degrade, and destroy us! It's the same story with spouses and boyfriends/girlfriends...we let them walk all over us and dictate our lives and then we sit there and wonder why we're miserable. We vent to our friends and family and then don't listen when they tell you to get out. These leeches...they take and they take and we sit there and let them. When does it finally click and become enough? When do we stand up for ourselves. I'll tell you when...It's when we realize that we have our faces in the dirt that these people have brought in. When we have that epiphany and wake up, that's when we stand up. We face these people head on and we call them out. In the end...we may end up looking like the asshole and that is OK. Just as long as we wake up to the people in our lives who don't deserve us, who treat us like shit and then play the victim. We can make it out of these relationships and survive. We can be happy and free of the guilt that the toxicity makes you feel. We just have to learn to say no more.

Let me tell you about one of the best feelings in the world. You know that feeling you get when you've been under water for a long time and you come up for air? That feeling you get when you get that first lung full of oxygen, the weightlessness and the pressure lifts from your chest and feeling the air cold against your wet skin... You feel alive and you go under just to do it again. That's the feeling you get when you cut toxic people from your life. Every time you get rid of someone negative in your life, you lift a weight off of your own chest. You can breathe better and you become happier. Your life gets richer and you find that you can do things that you never thought you would. You get more confident in your decisions and you are able to stand firm when you are criticized and judged. Now I'm not saying that cutting ties with loved ones is easy. It's one of the single hardest things you will ever do in your life. You're going to have days when you feel like talking to those people and allowing them back in. Sometimes we let them back in and it's OK, but usually they go right back to sucking you in and sucking up your life and then we have to do the process all over again...but we will be OK.