Anxiety Disorder: A Short Story

It’s hard to see how toxic someone really is when you care about them. People always say “Can’t you see what they’re doing to you?” or “They did/said that to you?”. You see this person with rose coloured glasses, or you only see the best parts about them. Not only do you not see the damage that’s being inflicting on you by that person, you don’t see the damage you’re inflicting on yourself by involving yourself with them. This is what happened to me. I spent so much of my time and energy on people who were so degrading and toxic to me and how I saw myself. I was always been someone who wasn’t a doormat, I didn’t let people walk over or take advantage of me. This is how I was until I met two people in my life who at first changed my life for
The second person was my ex boyfriend. He taught me how to love someone and the type of person I really want in a relationship. What I soon realized about these two people is that they both had psychological disorders. My old best friend had a form of PTSD and my ex had anxiety, depression and from what I remember a form of PTSD as well. With both of them, I changed their world, their symptoms would go away or be lessened with spending time with me. (This sounds very egotistical, but they both told me this previously) This led to them becoming more and more dependent on me, they were very sensitive to whatever I did and how I spoke. Whenever I would pull away in any form, they would become angry or sad and wonder what was wrong with me. They held an iron grip on me. When they did this, it made me feel guilty, I would feel bad for not wanting to spend time with them or for speaking my mind. Soon after they would start to degrade me, they would purposefully make me angry and whenever I did have a reaction, they would flip it back on me and say I was “too aggressive” or “always angry” and I never realized that they were the ones making me this