Dear me,
I have been thinking about the word toxic all week.
Rolling it around like a wine I can't decide if I like.
We throw that word at everything now, don't we?
Toxic this.
Toxic that.
The word of the decade.
And I've been throwing it too—generously, like confetti—at men, at friends, at whole cities when the mood strikes.
But this week...
the confetti landed on me.
And I didn't love the view.
L. is in a phase.
The kind where she turns every conversation back to herself, unconsciously, only to relate or prove she understands.
And I sat there, wine in hand, halo firmly on, mentally filing her under T for toxic.
Quick.
Efficient.
Case closed.
God...
I've become fast at this.
Is she toxic—
or have I simply grown impatient and arrogant as a side effect of growing?
And when did I become someone who can't tell the difference?
Fuck.
How could I compare her with D.?
For him, hurting people was a lifestyle.
A mission.
The only thing he truly had under control.
On the other side of toxic are the friends.
The ones who slowly make you smaller.
Who quietly laugh at your dreams.
Who treat your ambition like an inconvenience because it asks questions they've stopped asking themselves.
Their applause never arrives.
Not because you haven't earned it.
Because acknowledging your growth would require admitting they stopped growing.
And as for my childhood friends...
I stand firm that whoever's ego can't accept that your mind has grown broader will always try to shrink you back until you fit inside their frame again.
Not because they're evil.
Because that's the only version of you they still know how to understand.
I dislike comparing people.
Sports.
Art.
Books.
Or anything that exists to be experienced in its own way.
Comparison has a habit of erasing what makes something unique.
We are constantly searching for the best, as though anyone has the authority to declare it once and for all.
But the best is rarely a constant.
More often, it is an illusion—created by perspective, preference and the human need to rank what was never meant to compete.
Not everything exists to win.
Some things exist simply to be unlike anything else.
And perhaps uniqueness is the only standard worth protecting.
Meanwhile...
some friendships were never meant to hold my full weight.
Some friendships are heels on the ground and a joke already in the bag before we even sit down.
Some are strictly for laughing until the mascara runs at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday, where nobody becomes anything except slightly drunk and highly entertained.
And you know what?
That is also holy.
In its own cheap, glittery way.
So maybe my crime with L. wasn't keeping her too close.
Maybe I was ordering deep water from a bar that only serves cocktails.
And then blaming the bar.
Dear me,
Not everything that drains you is toxic.
Sometimes you're just thirsty for something that particular well was never built to hold.
So maybe I keep L.
Just—
in the right department.
Heels.
Jokes.
Mascara at eleven.
Cocktails.
Not deep water.
The deep end stays reserved.
And these days...
I'm very picky about who gets to swim there.
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