Toxic Friendships

One of my best friends has the opinion that you should do what makes you happy, and I wholeheartedly agree with him unless that decision will hurt someone else.  I am way too nice to people.  I give way too many "second chances" that are actually fourth and fifth chances.  And this is how I get hurt. 

I want to believe that people are inherently good.  And that they abide by the "treat others as you'd like to be treated rule."  But as time goes on and I get older and wiser, I find that people are not all good.  In fact, people can be very bad and hurtful, and the people who are the most hurtful can be the people you're closest to.

I'm talking about toxic friendships.  The ones where you feel drained and upset and even bad about yourself after an encounter with the "friend."  I have a friend in particular that, when we first started becoming really close friends, was one of the sweetest guys I'd ever met.  So much so that I developed a very short-lived crush on him before realizing we were much better as friends than anything more.

Now that we're a lot closer he knows things about me.  Secrets and personal things that I don't tell just anyone.  Even some things that I only feel comfortable telling him.  And if he's upset with me, even if it's a situation that's out of my control, he uses the things I've told him as missiles to hurt my feelings.

Last night in particular he was very hurtful.  I'm trying very hard to forgive him, but our text message conversation in particular keeps piercing my heart each time I go back and read it.  He was just so mean!  Like every response he made he was trying to hurt my feelings.

I've said it jokingly in the past, but there's a lot of truth to it, too.  I'm a delicate flower.  Yes, I know how lame and ridiculous that sounds, but it sums up me perfectly.  I am hurt really easily.  When someone is mean to me, or forgets about me, or doesn't put as much effort or love into a relationship as I do I get very hurt.

I guess that's what's happening here.  Maybe our relationship has run it's course and we'd be better off not being so close and me not giving him so much of my heart and my attention.  Even the thought of that hurts my heart.  Friendships ending, or even having rough patches, can be just as hard if not harder than relationship problems.

Right now I need to stop intermittently crying, especially since I'm at work.  My eyes are swollen from crying myself to sleep last night so I look like I was punched in the face.  And I'm sad.  It's hard to not cry when you're sad.