Poison People

There are people in your life who fill you to the brim with joy, and just by being in your life, next to you or across the continent, can buoy you up – sometimes even by saying nothing. And then there are other people whose very presence can function like a slow toxin in your system and pull you down to levels you didn’t know existed.

I have encountered both types in my life, and obviously, I prefer the former, although there is a small part of me which revels in undertaking the challenge of ‘rescuing’ these poison people. It should be noted that I have not asked these people if they wish to be rescued, instead assuming that no one wants to be in that position. Perhaps that was my first mistake…

One such person I met when I returned to school over 7 years ago. I was a mature student, and felt quite out of place in the classroom filled with younger students, many of them just out of high school. I made an instant connection with a fellow classmate who was the same age as me. We used to do many of our projects together and occasionally met outside of school hours for coffee or an occasional movie. But as I increasingly got to know this person, I felt more and more hopeless. Projects that took me more time to do would frustrate me, and I would find myself losing sleep and feeling tired most of the time. This friend would complain of happenings in their personal life, how their ex-spouse was being difficult or their current amour was being distant. I would sympathize and slowly become embittered toward a person I didn’t know, and towards circumstances to which I had only limited and biased knowledge. Once I graduated, this person slowly faded out of my life, and with that influence weakening, I began to flourish once more. It was as if I was a plant, deprived of sunshine and water, suddenly given both again.

The second time a poison person came into my life I was more prepared, and decided to tackle this as a ‘project’. I would send them funny jokes, leave cute cards for them to find, encourage them to come out and join in on group activities of which I was a part and even though there were smiles that occasionally broke through, they were tainted with acridity. It was as if this cloud hovering over them acted as a security blanket in which they felt solace. I spent over a year trying to pull this person out of the depths of their despair. I finally realized that this venom they were producing was like an emotionally fatal elixir, addictive and habit-forming. The more they took in, the more they reveled in its toxicity. I had to self-extricate before I, myself, became tainted.

What I have learned, and what I have speculated all along, is that you have to want to help yourself; you have to want to be happy. Recognition of this fact is the only antidote. Only then can you take those forward steps. In spite of everything, when I meet a ‘poison person’, I still give them a chance, but the moment they start bringing me down, I have to cut them loose. I am too precious a person to be pulled into that vortex again. I have too much living to do and I cannot afford to waste time wallowing through my days in an Eeyore fog.