It's natural that everyone wants friends, but many people who wish to maintain permanent friendships tend to not do so. Maybe it's because when people start to get to know you better, they consider you to be too weird, clingy, or unbearable, but for whatever reason, no one in your life is permanent. This is a situation that I'm all too familiar with. Whenever new friends come into my life, they end up leaving eventually. This has been the case since childhood, and as of right now I only have one childhood friend that either has not left me or is not completely terrible for my mental health in the long run.

Whenever a new friend comes into my life, I tend to be completely blindsided if they turn out to be a toxic person. Even after I find out that they're actually extremely toxic in real life, I still catch myself obsessing over them. However, the reactions I tend to get don't help much either. Whenever I admit to still caring about a toxic person, the reactions I tend to get would be along the lines of "you're such an idiot!! How could you still care for someone who is so manipulative that they turn so many people against you; someone who is so self-obsessed that they can't even acknowledge their own toxic behavior?"

The answer is simple: because I have never gotten that type of attention from anyone before.

People tend to completely forget about the fact that we all naturally crave attention, and a lot of people get so little attention from others, therefore, even getting attention from the most toxic people can be a refreshing breath of fresh air. Lots of people already know that saying "why don't you just leave?" is not an acceptable response when it comes to leaving toxic relationships because many people don't have a choice or can't find a place to leave, but many still think it's okay to think that it's okay to think someone who is still obsessed with a toxic person is an idiot for doing so.

In reality, this is not the case. Many people can't help but obsess over someone who gave them so much love and attention, even though they turned their back on them and turned out to be a terrible person in the long run. Many of those people do want to stop obsessing over these people, but they don't know how.

A lot of this does have to do with a lack of friends since childhood. Regardless of how much this has damaged a lot of their trust, they still have hope that one day, they will come back and regret everything they put you through, just so you can have one permanent friend in your life. I had so much hope in this person to the point that they turned my back to me, lied to me twice, and convinced so many people that I was the problem, that I almost forgot about the people worth my time.

But I know it's not over for my sanity. I'm getting help to get over this obsession so I can live a semi-normal life again. This way, I can be able to not rely on others to make me happy and fulfilled and I won't feel as empty with people leaving me anymore.