Toxic Relationships

Ever been in one?

Let me describe the symptoms for you:

- You feel that you have some commitment/obligation towards this person

- This person's existence in your life follows a pattern that he/she decides: either a persisting existence, an occasional existence, most probably depending on their mood

- You feel exhausted directly after a session with this person

- You work hard to stay positive, but this person drains all of your positive energy and gives you waves after waves of toxic negative energy

- If there is a certain setting/place common between you and this intoxicating person, at some point you will feel the urge to avoid this place/setting, be it home, work... etc

- You find yourself obsessing about this intoxicating person when you are alone. You prepare alot of what you want to say, but when you are face to face with them, you keep silent

Recently, I have found myself deeply entangled in such a situation. A friend of mine in work. I knew her back in 2009 when I joined my organization. However, at that time, it was never more than a casual hello and how are you.

At a certain point, I knew about her circumstances: she lost her mom to cancer when she was nine, and after that her father got married only to discover -after so many years- that the step mother was not being good with the children. He then divorced her. At a later stage he got married to another woman, the step mother that my friend is currently living with her family with. My friend is now 37 years old, and not married. She went into several marriage proposals (and even got engaged once), but always things do not work for her.

This lady is nothing like what I would like to consider a "friend". Her thoughts and way of life are way different than mine. I only find myself nodding my head to every thing she says because I know that -due to her circumstances and history- she is extra sensitive. Apparently, this lead her to think that I am "her friend", although all what I am doing is just avoid to piss her off. The rest of colleagues are just being their selves in front of her, and they consider it her problem if she gets pissed off. 

Recently, she started to open up to me. Only because I tolerated her the first time, she always came back to me asking for more. She nitpicks at every behavior from the colleagues and catches the slightest indication for being pissed off. She interprets everything as directed against her. She always finds away to understand a certain behavior as if it was determined to insult her. She complains about everything. About her father and how his feelings are because of his bad health. She is sick of him complaining about his health and how he will die soon (so she comes to complain to me!), she keeps thinking that her step mother intentionally starts fights with her (although if you listen well you will know that she reacts dramatically to very normal things that her step mother says). She has been working for eight years in the same position, and loves to blame the management for not giving her the chance to grow (although she, in fact, moved a one step back in the past, only because she refused to work with a manager that she did not like!). The reality is, she was asked several times to work in other departments to gain more experience, and she refuses because she "does not like the people there". I do a double effort to tolerate her without really absorbing the HUGE amount of negative vibes that she throws in my way!

Very recently, she once came to me really devastated. I sat with her and talked to her about certain things about her life that have to change. Mainly, her relationship with God. After that, she started praying more systematically, and eventually have committed to prayer, mashaAllah.

But the thing I was afraid of has happened: she started looking at me as the savior. She comes to see me every break time. She visits me in my office room during working hours. When we go home she keeps texting me, and because I know what she is like I always made an effort to reply to her messages on time and -regardless of how exhausted I feel- add smileys and write creative sentences just so that I do not give her the feeling that she is ignored. My son, then, got sick. And for a week I was out of office. I had to fight with baby Leo every couple of hours to take the medicine, and then absorb the meltdown after forcing him to take the it. I was exhausted all the time, so some times I only replied to her messages after I got baby Leo to sleep and collapse on the couch, and some times I totally forgot to do. And honestly I had no energy to come up with cheerful messages so I replied just answering her specific questions.

And I came back to work.

And she was stiffened with me. And I was really stressed. I felt the stress right from the moment I had to delay her first message, because I knew she will get upset. But when I saw how she treated me at work I was really angry inside. Add to that: that she is surrounding me with all sorts of things/gifts that she even makes me guilty! I once metioned that I wish I would be the sort of person who grows plants. She brought me a plant at office. And she keeps checking if I watered it or not. As if I need an additional chore at office! Not only that, she brought me a plant for home, that turned out to need to be planted outside! And when I told her that I do not have a place outside, she was upset and asked me to put it on the window edge of the kitchen! When I told her that we do not open the shades because people on the street will then be able to look into our kitchen, she insisted on going over every window of the house to check if I can put the plant there! I told her that this will be an additional chore that I am honestly UNABLE to take, she was really upset. I, eventually, accepted her gift and took it to my father in law so that he can plant it in the garden! The other day we were chatting with friends and we spoke about making cakes, I do not know how my comment about (betty croker) cakes turned out to be a request from me to her asking her to bake a cake! I was about to shout!

Oh, and in addition to all of that, she was once whining to me about her marriage projects that were never fulfilled, when I said that it is not her fault, and that it is only about Naseeb, and made the mistake of telling her -in a joking manner!- that if baby Leo was older I would have taken her as a bride for him, and since that moment, she started calling me "my mother in law" and calling baby Leo "hubby"! This is driving me insane, because now I feel that this innocent joke has tackled a soft spot in her heart, and now she is adopting this story to live the feeling of being a "daughter in law"! She never lets an occasion pass without reminding me that she is my hypothetical "daughter in law"!

What I am feeling now is that enough is enough. I am really EXHAUSTED with this burden. And I have made the decision: I have to cut out relationships that entangle me and draw me back. I am a person who needs all of my energy to keep my home healthy and happy, which is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT with the burdens of working, being a housewife, and a mother. My son needs me and he has all the right to have me with him, while I am in a good condition. That enables me to be a giving loving mother.

The question is: if damage has happened, will it be my guilt? Will it be my burden? Shall I live with the feeling of being guilty for the rest of my life?

And how to avoid this?