Detoxified
I’ve
come to understand that I am the human equivalent of a toxic
waste dump. For thirty four years I have been living in
the shadow of a huge neon sign that reads "Dump Your
Shit Here ‘Cause This Gal Won’t Mind", and
I haven’t until now. For the last few months I have
been literally cleaning house, I have been going through
the dark closets of my house and my mind and I have been
throwing out all the moldy and tattered things that seem
to have accumulated over the years. I am a pack rat; I have
a problem with letting things go and it affects all areas
of my life. I’ve been carrying thirty four years of
stress and worry around because I haven’t been able
to let go and trust that everything is going to be okay,
and this is probably the reason why people seem to think
that I can take their problems on as well as my own.
Well
the Waste Dump has officially been shut down. I am putting
myself into Relationship Detox and, as of this moment, I
am no longer a receptacle for toxic personalities. I know
I’m not alone in this, we all have people in our lives
that drive us to the brink (or to drink) because their problems
somehow become ours and no matter how hard we try we let
them. We let them dump on us because we think we can fix
them by being shoulders to cry on, but when all is said
and done they move on to the next drama and we store their
craziness in our unlimited emotional storage space. Well
I am now replacing my sign; it now reads "This Space
Full. Move On."
In
the last few months I have made a concerted effort to bring
down the toxic levels and I have been throwing out so-called
friendships along with box upon box of useless garbage.
I have been hanging on to people that have no use in my
life except to make it more cluttered than it already is:
people that I don’t hear from for months at a time
and who call me drunk out of their minds at three in the
morning to tell me how much they’ve missed me, people
who see me only as an outlet for their sexual fantasies,
people that expect me to drop everything when they have
an emergency but who are unavailable when a crisis befalls
me, and people who expect that I will help them pick up
the pieces when a death occurs in their family but who are
too busy living the high life when my life falls apart.
In the last few months I have let them all go.
It
began when my beloved Gran died last August. It sounds horrible
but I’m grateful that she died when she did because
her death helped to shed light on a relationship that had
become cancerous. I was devastated when she died but nothing
prepared me for the betrayal that I felt when this so-called
friend did nothing to comfort me, there were no phone calls,
no hugs, nothing. When she did finally email me three weeks
later she went on and on about her life, her career and
her married boyfriend and ended the email (and subsequently
the friendship) by saying ‘oh, sorry to hear about
your Gran, I’ve just been really busy.’ I decided
that I wanted to live so the cancer had to go.
It
continued with the re-appearance of my old pal Rupert, the
King of Crazymakers. Here is Rupert in a nutshell: talented,
intelligent, belligerent, selfish, self-obsessed, romantic,
idealistic, moronic, clueless. Rupert, the man who disappears
without a word for months on end and who can’t seem
to understand why I won’t drop everything I’m
doing when he finally decides to resurface. Rupert, the
man who thinks that calling me to apologize when he’s
falling down drunk will endear him to me; the man who somehow
managed to turn my life upside down every time he decided
to come back into it. Well I finally managed to turn it
right side up again and he fell out. For good.
So here it is. This is my declaration to myself. The doormat
and welcome sign have been removed from my house and I am
not going to put them back anytime soon. It ends now. I
am cleaning house and I don’t know how long it’s
going to take but it’s long overdue.
he