The Toxic label and Our Easy Love

This post is by all means inspired by my favorite podcast, 30 Minutes with the Perrys- specifically an episode that speaks extensively on the rising trend of the term “toxic” and how easy it is to jump on the wagon and give up on friendships and people that don’t necessarily harm us but we simply can’t stand or cope with.

It’s relatively easier to throw anything over the fence as long as we convince ourselves that this is dangerous but the truth for most of the time is this- some friends can be irritable. We can find some attitudes of friends we completely dislike and can’t stand. There’s just a trait about someone’s character that bugs us, gets us furious. That’s fine, even understandable sometimes but to call it toxic? And based on that, cut them off completely from our lives because we’re “done with them”? Now that can get tricky and sitting here, my favorite thing about writing this piece is that it speaks to me too. Countless times I’ve hidden behind the tag of toxicity to cut off people or keep my distance from them because I just couldn’t stand them or they irritated me for many reasons.

Toxic: poisonous.

Synonyms: poisonous, venomous, virulent, noxious, dangerous, destructive, harmful, unsafe, malignant, injurious, pestilential, pernicious, environmentally unfriendly.

Now even reading these words get me cringing because looking back, I will admit there have been people I’ve cut off who truly were unsafe in the sense that their presence in my life led me to places where I compromised on my values which always ended in a rough season of self hate and just mental wounds I kept inflicting on myself. And that was unsafe. That was destroying me. And how we respond to danger is that we remove ourselves from it. We put in measures to check our safety. We seek help.

But I know for a fact there’ve been others I’ve simply abandoned because I couldn’t stand. Period. They caused no harm at all, not poisonous in the least sense. But of course, I dragged it under the heavy label of toxicity because that’s the easiest thing to do- to walk away from people and situations, to keep the door closed behind and go opening new ones because things didn’t go as we expected and people didn’t respond as we hoped they would and that hurt us. And if they hurt us, they must be dangerous- must be wanting to damage us with every chance they get. And so, they must go.

We’ve generalized the term “toxic” so much that if it’s unfavorable or uncomfortable in any sense, then it’s got to be killing us. On the podcast, Jackie talks about the general interpretation of toxic friendships as “any relationship that is exhausting, that we might be presuming is seasonal because it is draining us of our energy and our mental capacity and we just say -I’m over it. I’m done with it.” For too long we’ve carried the wrong interpretation of the word and have ruined such good friendships.

That’s what every tumblr post preaches but just happens to look like a survival quote on the surface. We’ve lost so much of selflessness as a generation. If it’s too hard to fight for, then it definitely isn’t worth it. If we have to go all the way to find it, then we wouldn’t bother starting the journey. Anything that crosses the line of our comfort zone is simply a threat and like all threats, must be gotten rid of.

We’ve stopped accepting the risks, we’ve stopped taking chances on people. We’ll rather burn an old bridge than mend it. We seek the easy way out of everything and this is killing us- because in the end, all we have left is shallow relationships that we can quickly turn our backs on because, where’s the time to plant and grow? Where’s the heart to understand and forgive? Where’s the hope for when light makes it through the dark?

Here’s a little clarity on the subject- Just because someone disagrees with us doesn’t make them toxic. Having no benefits from a friendship or a relationship doesn’t make it toxic. If people are not teachable, it doesn’t make them toxic. We must understand the power in giving people room to grow. We are allowed to be hurt. There are circumstances that frustrate us but we can’t keep running away from difficult relationships. To assume that anybody is perfect is unfair to us and to them. We struggle in making them into something they’re not and they struggle in accepting themselves with the thought that nothing they do is enough.

We can’t keep putting a seasonal tag on our relationships as an excuse to walk in lovelessness. There’s a disorder in the presumption that in taking care of ourselves, we can’t give other the permission to be human, and flawed and worthy of our love, time, friendship. No love is easy. Love is perseverance. Love is patient. Love is not self-centered. We have to do the hard work of loving someone when it gets hard. Relationships can be burdensome and irky and still not toxic. But only wanting people in our world that are easy, that don’t take work is convenient, not love.

Love calls us to more than a life of convenience. Love says I choose you in the mess, in the darkness.

In my next post, I hope to address how vital communication is in resolving tension between friends and gaining more clarity. We can talk about boundaries, expectations and ways we both agree we wish to see the friendship grow. Communicating expectations, pain and assumptions is such a huge step.

There’s beauty in the growth of friendships. There’s victory through the battle of fighting for people in our lives. Perhaps instead of saying “I can’t keep fighting for this, I’m done” we should say “I can’t just give up. I can’t just walk away.”

What a big difference that will make!