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There should be such a thing as time-lapse writing. You can’t see it with the naked eye, but as I’m just now coming to the realization that I can be toxic, I keep stopping, thinking, staring at the screen and wondering why I play my part(and play it well) in creating toxic relationships and I do it for long periods of time.
I have no answer to why I participate in being toxic and by this time, something else to add to the piece pops into my head, so I expound on that for a bit before stopping again to wonder what’s up with me. If you speed up the video you might see me write at mostly a normal pace for me.
Before we go any further, let me define what I mean by “creating toxic relationships.” That means not only creating new relationships that are toxic, but it also means taking your existing, good relationships and poisoning them so they become toxic as well.
The existing ones are the hardest ones to deal with.
So. Why do I add toxicity to a relationship?
I have no clue. Seriously.
Sometimes I think it’s my subconscious self-sabotaging, and sometimes I notice it, though not until too late. Other times I see it, but don’t always make a great effort to stop it from continuing.
Because I’m on the spectrum I look at things very logically and factually. It’s just how we roll. So, what you might take as me whining and complaining about something really isn’t that.
It’s me explaining the set of circumstances that led me/us to this particular moment. I take full responsibility for my actions and don’t say, “I’m autistic, so it’s ok. It’s just part of the deal.”
Yeah, it may be just part of the deal, but turning toxic and self-sabotaging good things in our life is never OK.
We need to find our own support system of people we can go to when we start feeling nasty and mean. People who can smack us back to reality if that’s what it takes and help us get out of that cycle quickly.
Chances are we may never get out of the cycle, but if we shorten the duration of the episodes, that’s a step in the right direction.
One reason I get toxic is that I have a very hard time letting go of things. I tell myself just to forget about it, but my brain says, “no way!” Fighting with your brain may sound hokey, but we all do it from time to time.
Remember the last time you were walking up the stairs of that really, really, really tall waterslide and that talk you had with yourself? It’s pretty much the same thing, just, well, toxic.
The fighting keeps my mood worse than it would normally be, which can typically bring out the @$$**** in me.
I don’t like being that guy, I wanna be the other guy. The guy who is happy and can let stuff slide. I’m told by a former psychiatrist that this goes hand in hand with me being on the spectrum, but I don’t want to sound like I’m using it as an excuse because I’m not.
I take full responsibility.
When I’m in the moments where I can’t let things go and someone is over the top rude or degrading, then I can get pretty ugly. Let’s just leave it at that.
As I sit here looking at the relationships I have and ones I’ve had, I’m embarrassed to be me.
I had full custody of my daughter since she was five. Now she’s twenty-one and she turned out just fine. Yet I know there were moments when I was toxic, maybe not in what I said, but in how I acted or reacted and I’ll probably always wonder what kind of relationship we could have had.
My dad and I had a pretty good relationship, but he’s been dead for seventeen years, so that doesn’t do me much good these days.
My mom and brother don’t understand me and probably never will. That frustrates me to no end, and I’m sure they’ve gotten more than their fair share of toxic. I remember a bit, but I’m sure I’ve found a way to forget the other memories.
Why do you think I’m single?
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. I hope. I don’t ever want to feel toxic. I want to be the happy, fun J.R. I need a support system in a big way. I tend to keep a lot inside and then it all bottles up, reaches a boil and then, BOOM!
Toxic crud everywhere.
Don’t be me. Get a support system. Find family members, friends, a partner or anyone else you trust to agree to be there for you, to listen to you and to talk you off the proverbial ledge. They will be the best posse you ever put together.
Tell me your stories of being toxic.
How did you overcome it?
Or did you overcome it?
How can we rid our world of toxicity? One person at a time. Start with you and let others do the same.
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