The Antidote

I had a conversation with someone today. It was really just about her teenage daughter and the good for nothing boy she chooses to spend time with. While I sat and listened to my colleague she made the statement about all of us having that one poison or toxic person we just cant seem to shake. At first I thought, nah, not me. Then I realized, I was lying to myself.

I know the conversation was about having a relationship that is toxic. About wanting to be with someone that everyone in their right mind tells you not to be. Usually its for your own good, and the advice most times, should be heeded. I see it happen all the time and its very easy as an outsider to shake your head and think "what is wrong with them?".

Although I have had toxic people in my life, I cant say that I have any relationships with those people anymore. Well, unless you count my mother, who is poisonous to my heart and soul and doesn't even know it. But family isn't what I'm talking about here.

I would like to think that ridding myself of poison people has rid me of their effects on me, but that's not the case at all. And even though I don't keep running back for another shot of death, I still carry the effects of their lethal ways with me every day. I think this is pretty normal. Its normal to be effected by people. The relationship, no matter what kind, molded some part of you. But what does it mean when you find yourself capable of letting the toxins go, but unwilling?

For me, I find safety in knowing who I am and how I feel. Even if I don't like how it feels. I am a realist. I know life is not all good, and sometimes I will feel bad. I don't dwell on the negative impacts on my life, but have to admit that I venture back to them in my mind. I find a strange comfort in remembering the sad and empty times; the yearning etc of some of my adult relationships. I seek out the feelings of loss in an attempt to remind me that I don't feel like that anymore. Its my way of never taking what I have now for granted. A way to appreciate things even when they seem mundane and unimportant.

There are people that still haunt me. I find them in my thoughts, my photos, my dreams and many times, my disgust. But I still find them. I just cant seem to walk away; not because I enjoy their poison, but because it reminds me that I found the antidote.