Seeing this on my Pinterest board put a night of soul searching into perspective. A few days ago, I posted about the apology that I never thought I would get. Those few text messages led me to a long night of soul searching. It seems that the couple is hoping to start over in our friendship and I have no desire to have them back in my life. Feeling that way bothered me, and it took me a while to figure out why.
It bothered me because this is the first "toxic" relationship that I haven't been the one to initiate the end of. There have been many relationships that have been removed from my life with the understanding that they would never be rekindled. I went through a not so proud period of my life, and have worked to remove any of the "negative" (I use quotes because I don't like to think of them as negative) influences in my life. I've always been the one to initiate the break, and went through a grieving process before actually initiating the break so it wasn't such a shock to my system. I think this is why it initially bothered me that I didn't want to rekindle my friendship with this couple. The end to the friendship was something that I never saw coming, and hadn't prepared for before hand. I never expected them to ask to rekindle the friendship, therefore, I used all of my internal defense mechanisms to prepare for life without them. It felt like a slap in the face for her to say that they still think of and care about me, because I don't think of or care about them. (I care in the general sense of not wanting anything bad to happen to them, but no more than I care for any person that I don't know well.)
That night of soul searching made me realize that it doesn't make me a bad person for not wanting to rekindle the friendship. I am not a bad person for protecting myself from a repeat of the hurt. I am not a bad person for putting my family's best interest first. I am not a bad person for looking out for myself. It took me a long time to reach the point where I understood that I can accept their apology while declining their olive branch of friendship. And that, does not make me a bad person.
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