The Shattering of Rose-Tinted Glasses
The madness of mandating happiness
Going down the wrong road, again, my frustration went from a simmer to a boil. All the breathing exercises I had heard about were not doing anything to temper this bubbling feeling, as I anticipated another wrong turn. This car ride needed to be over, this day needed to be over, and I wanted this friendship to be over. Getting out of the car, he waved back as if we had had the time of our lives, but as I waved back, I was actually saying goodbye.
Losing a friend is always a difficult thing, and it always will be. The heartache it can cause can rival that of romantic partners or the estrangement of a family member. They are often the quieter forces in our lives, that help make all the other ones run, but when they’re over you can feel that power shifting under your feet. The tectonic plates rearranging in aggravation of lives parting, when previously they were once a magnificent Pangea of support, and comradery. I had experienced the earthquake of friend shakeups in the past, but this one, I had decided to cause myself.
This is my story about how toxic positivity ruined one of the best friendships I ever had. It may not make me look good, and it certainly isn’t a singular story to tell, but it is something that exists, and contrary to actual positivity itself, can be quite harmful. However, this phrase and recognition of being were not in the lexicon as I was going through this, I had no awareness that it was a wider problem, or how it was affecting me, and how it would end up breaking me all the same. We know telling mentally ill people to, “get over it,” doesn’t work nor does telling someone to adopt a happy-go-lucky attitude, but we’re only beginning to know what that looks like as a pathology.
It is only with some distance from that time and that person that I am able to now write this. There is always so much to process with the dissolution of a bond, and of what that meant in our lives. The range of emotions is like a wildfire that seems to want to spread far and wide from the reaches of the forest to the very bed I sleep in, not concerned with limiting its destructive inferno. During that time, I oscillated between pity, contempt, sympathy, sadness, longing, resentment, and finally resignation. The push and pull between wanting to stay in the friendship and wanting to back out tugged at the fibers of my brain every day. How could I call myself a “good,” friend if I don’t try to stick it out, and help? There you see my fatal flaw, the pit I dug for myself that no one asked me to dig, I went from friend to savior in the flash of a single thought. It emblazoned through my mind, scorching its insidious notion onto my skull and then burned out just as quickly, leaving me with the ashes of a misguided understanding of my role here.
What role could that really be when they were adamant about dismissing my life and its experiences at every turn? I now see why our journey that final day was so winding because he only wanted the happy detours, the streets lined with smiles, and sidewalks that were cushioned with beds of roses he could use to tint his glasses with. All of the fevered fits of that day were simply the literal manifestation of the longer road of contention we had been down, a contention he could not see because he refused to see anything in a light that wasn’t gleaming. One time, we had a conversation about the moon, and he seemed to not grasp how important it is for the survival of our planet for it to be hanging up there so high and mighty. I was shocked by his ignorance then, but it makes much more sense now. He could never accept the night, and the darkness it held when you looked out into it, there could only be sun to him.
Onward I propelled myself, into the maelstrom of his sickness, thinking I could be a salve for it. I was under no allusions I alone could cure this fissure of ugliness that seemed to be growing wider and wider as the years of our friendship went on, but as everyone else left, I felt I had to be the one that remained. Here you can see, this experience was learning about myself just as much as it was learning about him, and toxic positivity.
The position I sandwiched myself into only increased the pressure as if I always had to be available to aide him or have his loved ones rely on me to be there to help cut through to him whenever things got particularly bad. The intervention we attempted ended with him playing video games with the very group of people that led to us needing that intervention in the first place. I cannot tell you what a dissonance it was to be sitting there watching Mario ride around in his kart acting as if everything was okay when just a few minutes ago we had all been on the verge of tears. Instead of realizing the state that we were in he blasted some music and began dancing around, oblivious of our feelings, even of our own love and care for him, in that moment he demanded to feel good.
He could never handle me venting to him, confiding in him, or spelling out to him that what he thinks is good about my life is what is actually hurting me. If it was not within his perspective of peppiness he denied it, spat on it, and left you feeling like you were wrong for simply dealing with some of the harsh realities of life. The world, to him, could only exist in the walls of a rainbow, all of its brilliant colors blinding you to anything that’s challenging or tough. Perhaps, in that way, the toxicity of his positivity was a coping mechanism, but I’m not here to be an armchair psychologist.
This is how it was for me; it may not be like this for everyone, and his sunshine view came as a result of the trauma he had not resolved. Hence you see why my ultimate separation from him was one of the hardest decisions I ever made. It came upon the all too upsetting realization that this person is in pain, and I cannot help him. Worse, his pain is creating pain within others that is not sustainable.
Finally, I showed up for myself, one of the first times I had ever done so. That day of intense discussions, arguments, and appeals had come to an end and as I rode off into the coming night, I knew he would continue on riding away from it. My emotional, mental, and physical coffers were spent, I had twisted and contorted myself so many times for someone who only made me feel horrible, about myself and the dynamics of a friendship that had gone sour. Soon after I made it clear to him that I needed space, and that was it, years together over.
It is of no surprise to me that this is one of the longest pieces I’ve written during my, short, time on here thus far. It was a painful chapter in my life, but it’s not one I regret, as it taught me one of the most important lessons some of us never learn — boundaries. Since then, I have taken my experience with him and have sculpted it into a finely marbled structure built on self-respect, mental wellbeing, and growth. I can only hope he has since learned to plant something in his garden other than roses.