I've always had a hard time cutting people off and keeping them out of my life. Someone would hurt me or be toxic to me in some way and I'd say I was done, but then sometime later, I'd let them back into my life again.

I'm a forgiving person. You can stab me in the back and I'll forgive you. Yes, it will take time for me to cool down, but I'd forgive you eventually. I forgive even when the person didn't ask for forgiveness. I'd go back to them and apologize, even when I wasn't the one in the wrong.

I give multiple chances and I take a lot of shit until I've finally had enough. But then, I forgive them and apologize. Everything is good again.

However, there are rare occasions where I keep my word and I will cut someone off for good.

I've learned over the past few months that it's okay to cut someone off who is toxic to your emotional wellbeing. I learned that it's sometimes necessary to leave someone behind, especially if you're trying to be a better person for yourself.

I had a couple of situations where someone was just constantly bringing me down. I could be in the best mood and they'd just have some sort of way to make it about how crappy their life was.

I don't mean to sound like I don't care about other people and what they're going through because, trust me, I do care. I love to make people feel better, and I love to make sure my friends are doing well. I will sit with my friends for hours talking about our problems, but this was different from that.

This was toxic.

I get that everyone has problems. Heck, I have problems, but the thing is, when something was going wrong in my life, they'd find a way to one-up me on how their life is worse.

I would introduce them to my friends and they'd bring up all their issues and tell their whole life story to them. They would go on about their life the whole time that I was supposed to hang out with my friends. I sat there, not even engaging in the conversations with MY friends because every time I'd try to talk about something else, they'd bring it back to their life.

It got to the point where my friends didn't want to come to things I invited them to if this person was there because them being there would mean that they'd have to listen to them talk about all the shit they went through AGAIN.

I tried to ignore it and I tried to help them get through their issues, but eventually, I realized that they were just pulling me down when I was in the middle of trying to get my head in the right spot.

They weren't a bad person, but how they looked at life was completely different from how I did. If I wanted to get my mental health to where I wanted it, I had to cut them out of my life.

The moral of this story isn't that you shouldn't care about other people's problems because you should always be there for the people you care about. The point I'm trying to get across is that you shouldn't keep someone in your life that you don't want there, just because they have a lot of shit that happened in the past.

Put your mental health first. Keep your word when you say that you're done with someone who's constantly bringing you down. At the end of the day, you're the only one watching out for yourself. I know this is all a little harsh, but it's the truth. Keep the people with good energy in your life and leave those that are toxic in the past.