Oct 6, 2019
My Toxic Past Reflection
When Andre and I became friends, I couldn’t foresee how toxic our relationship would become. A toxic relationship is an unhealthy association with another person that starts off positive and on friendly terms but later progresses into a tumultuous development of periodically destructive scenarios of relating. Our relationship is the slow, tantalizing movement of calmness before the storm. In the beginning, we had a nice friendship where we enjoyed each other’s company. After roughly seven months into our friendship, there was an unexpected twist of a downward spiral in our interactions. There was a desolate coldness that permeated through our sprouting distance from each other. I felt that he wasn’t respecting me as a friend. My toxic friendship with Andre had a negative impact that taught me to reject unreasonable requests, tread carefully in approaching matters, better improve my communication skills, and keep delicate matters private. It’s this profound effect of the pain and suffering endured at his hands that led me to expand on my interpersonal relations.
Our relationship originated on San Jose City College (SJCC) campus in the beginning of the fall semester of 2014. After my morning class, I headed over to the Student Center to see my friends in the Gamer Group. When I went into the cyber café lounge, I noticed my friend, Angel, doing signs and gestures with his hands to express himself to a peer. The guy amicably responded with sign language of his own and left the Student Center to go wait for his ride home. On another day, as I made the way into the student lounge after class, I spotted him sitting alone at a table on the far right of the room. He was quickly eating his lunch. His bleached blond hair glinted in the rays of the sunlight refracted through the window. The gleam of the shining rays beckoned me over to approach him. I called out to him in greeting, and he looked up to wave back at me. He introduced himself as Andre and informed me that people usually call him AJ. We engaged in idle chitchat to get acquainted with each other by speaking over the loudness of the gamers’ voices and gaming fun.
We were off to a nice start with pleasantries abound, and we had similar interests in musical taste of the Pop variety and anime, like Pokémon, that connected us on common ground. Through him, I got to meet his friend, Zack, his former girlfriend, Elaine (whom he brought to campus during finals week), and Ivy (an international student that he’d befriended through social media). That opened up an opportunity for me to build on my networking through their social circles. In some circumstances, he had behaved like a gentleman and was sweet towards me. For instance, he held doors open for me, helped me with carrying my heavy baggage load on a UC Santa Cruz tour, and treated me to a takeout dinner at Boiling Crab. Some good times we spent together were over some shared past negative experiences like being harshly disciplined in the home while growing up. He mentioned about the emotional, verbal abuse that he’d endured from his maternal grandmother whom he calls Mom. During the Spring Semester 2015, when I was personally tutoring him in the study room in the library, I vented to him about my trouble with my grandma: how she says some hurtful things that deeply offended me regarding my choice of partner. Dripping tears of sadness clouded my vision as I voiced out my anguish, “I even told Grandma that I hate her,” to his listening ears. He responded, “That’s not as bad as what I said to mine. I told her that I cross my heart and hope she dies.” When I expressed my regret with my blunt response, he made to put his hands on my cheeks and pull my mouth into a smile. “Don’t be sad,” he gleefully expressed and offered me a mint which I accepted. Even when I was having a personal issue with my boyfriend, he was there to give me guy advice, and I vented to him. Through the ups and the downs, we were there as each other’s emotional support as needed.
Some time after the budding of our friendship, I discovered that he has some flawed traits about him. When we were hanging inside the cyber café of the Student Center at one point, Andre was enthusiastically babbling away with his stream of graphical content detailing Elaine’s and his physical intimacy experiences in his bedroom. My stomach had churned with knotted discomfort at his every word. I let out a breath that I’d been holding when he finally finished with his personal account. He was oblivious to my apparent unease at the time. Whenever he spoke his mind, it’s like a motor engine that keeps running till it’s manually shutdown after its completed task for the time being. It’s a challenge to have to strain my ears to catch on to his hurried speech. Also, whenever we had a conversation, his abrupt response disrupted my train of thought when I didn’t finish my sentence. Another characteristic aspect that bothered me is his disregard for my decisive rejection to his unnecessary requests of product purchases. He had persisted in pestering me to surrender to his demands and even resorted to begging. One excuse he used is “I don’t have enough cash to help Mack and I’m stressing because of the cats.” This continuously inflicted pressure gradually led up to a strained relationship between us.
About seven months into our friendship, there was a turbulent progression in our interactions. In various instances, Andre had approached me through Facebook messenger with his miscellaneous requests of products he’d wanted: clothing articles for outer wear (MMA shorts and hoodies for him and his new girlfriend, Desiree), basic electronic accessories (like USB chargers and ear buds), and fitness products (the powdered protein shake mix). Personally, being the one to please and liking to help others, I decidedly agreed and did what I perceived as being helpful. Even when he and I went out to visit the Great Mall, he begged me to buy him one blue t-shirt he’d selected. When I refused, he looked at me with puppy-dog eyes and stated, “I’ll pay you back later.” Later, when I got invited to his place to hang in the late spring of 2016, I approached him about his accumulated monetary debt to me; regarding all the miscellaneous he had me purchase for him. He explained and proposed, “I’m having a hard time now with having to pay back Mom and buying my own stuff. When I can, I’ll give you twenty dollars at a time.” I took his words to heart and patiently awaited for when he would follow through with this payment arrangement. Several months had passed and there was no action taken on his part to reimburse me. The accumulated tension from his total disregard and being left hanging with an unresolved issue caused the lava to boil within the very fiber of my soul. It bubbled and brewed steam of ferocity from pent-up frustration. Finally, it let loose in a volatile eruption of anger directed towards Andre. When I texted him a lengthy message to address my issue with his inattentiveness and inconsideration of me, it was not well received. He shot back with utter disregard and excuses to cover up his irresponsibility, “Renne, I will pay you back. You need to stop and chill. I just like any other adult have responsibilities and things I need for college…” After a week, there’s no further communication from him on his promised reimbursement to me. Thus, I was left doubtful of his words.
Out of aggravation, I had turned to Facebook to vent my thoughts on his messaged, rude responses without his name mentioned. It was upsetting to be ignored by Andre for a few days that I’d hoped he would reflect on his misconduct upon seeing my post. On a later post where I’d expressed my thoughts on an instance of being pressured, he finally responded by commenting, “Renne, nobody wants to hear your rants. Hope you have a better day tomorrow…” That still didn’t resolve the reimbursement delay where he’s unresponsive. At the same time, I was also experiencing a conflicted drama with my friend, Ruth, when we had differing viewpoints over a trivial matter. It became an argument when she took a strongly passionate stance on her position with insistence. I was blocked from further explaining my perspective for clarity when she cut off our message exchange. To cope, I had browsed the web for some information about good communication skills, which I then shared on my Facebook timeline for reference. The outcome came with an unexpected twist with my postings taken out of context.
An explosive, dramatic climax reared its ugly head in a domino effect in early July 2016. That was derived from my Facebook posts that were “anonymously” regarding them. Through their private text messages, Andre had managed to get Ruth involved and turned her against me. He stirred the drama pot by exaggeratedly insinuating to her that I’d been negatively gossiping about her — claiming that I labeled her “the seducer of men.” Over the Messenger app, she lashed out her anger at my boyfriend and me about our detailed private relations that she heard from Andre. It greatly upset me when that was supposed to be kept secret (even from Ruth whom has feelings for my boyfriend). Furthermore, there was a case of cyberbullying when they both directly called me out on Facebook with a bashing post created by her on my timeline. They didn’t take kindly to me venting about my personal problems regarding them for others to see despite no mentions of their names. I argued by commenting that it’s their deal for causing such issues for me in the first place. Ruth countered, “Well, if you have issues with what I do, then that’s your deal!” Both expressed their displeasure at my “anonymous” postings of my thoughts regarding them. After that, it resulted in them proclaiming the end of our friendships and blocking me on Facebook. In turn, I blocked them and further communication had stopped from that point. During all that time, I had learned to spot the signs of a toxic friend and develop skills for better interpersonal relations with others.
My former negatively progressive, toxic relationship with Andre made me come to a realization regarding my flawed communication skills. I realized that I needed to work on utilizing direct, clear communication to set boundaries. Rather than taking a person at face value, I have opted to observe people’s actions closely to determine one’s true character. From the betrayal experienced at my expense, I have learned to not be too trusting of others. Plus, it’s best to not overshare, especially when he used that very personal information to hurt me later. The learned social skills and behavior, for healthy relations, are applied to my currently established friendships.
