How Do You Get Out Of A Toxic Relationship?

Whenever I felt uncomfortable or unsure about someone, I kept my distance. I didn’t get too close. If I didn’t feel right about the information someone was giving, how someone was looking at me or how someone was talking to me, I wouldn’t try to question or doubt my initial feelings about it.

I wanted to find people that I could trust, but there were a lot of people in my life already that I couldn’t trust wholeheartedly. I wondered how my life had come to the point of having people in it that didn’t care about me and that I knew wouldn’t look out for me. They didn’t care about me or even ask how I was doing. I struggled with having to look out for myself all the time. It would have been so much easier if there were people that genuinely wanted to see me succeed and help me.

I got extremely frustrated with people and why they did not understand how I felt. If people asked how I felt, I got mad because I felt that if they actually cared or knew me that they would already know the answer to that. I also felt depressed over not having people that knew my situation.

I realized that the opinions of other people did not matter in the end. The fact is that other people did not know my struggles and situation. I had to face that.

I knew what I wanted my life to look like. I wanted to feel stable. I needed to find a home that I could live in apart from everything that made me upset or sad. I focused on my career, job and other income-making endeavors to support myself. I set out tasks each day that would help get me to where I wanted to be. I wrote things down about what I wanted. I had lots of lists. I kept organized.

I had to deal with the fact that there were other people that were more focused on themselves and their life rather than helping me or providing support. I also had to settle within myself deep feelings of loss and grief over my mom and what my life used to be. I struggled with struggling for so many years.

Right now, my life is completely different. I don’t wake up sad everyday. I used to cry multiple times a day, but I have lots of things to look forward to now. There are goals that my fiancé and I want to reach so we talk about what’s going on and how we are going to get there.

I was able to support myself for a time and leave the people behind that did not support me how I needed. If someone does not want to be in my life, I will accept that we are in different places in life. I cannot change that person’s internal motivation. I never got to a place where my life got harder because I didn’t desperately cling to people that I wanted in my life out of nostalgia or loneliness. I realized that when my life wasn’t getting better that I had to change the people, environment and goals that I had… when I did that, my life got drastically better.