On "Toxic"

I don't think "toxic" is a helpful word.

Yes, people are nuanced. And yes, everyone can act toxic. But I don't think it's a helpful term because:

• for a person struggling emotionally, who might be called toxic as a result, hearing that feedback feels like a nail in the coffin of despair.
• for the people labeling others as toxic, it takes the painful grayscale of an entire situation and paints it instead in black and white.

Even though I've learned to think of some people as toxic because of their inexcusable behavior, it doesn't help me or feel right to label them as that. Every experience is a grayscale event. It has its bad moments and its good ones. I've learned helpful things from those who have also hurt me, and there are activities that those people and I both enjoy doing. I no longer have relationships with those people, and I think that's what matters.

To label someone or something as toxic is to draw a line between yourself and that experience, and to also apply that label to all the things that are associated with the experience on the other side of that line. It might be simpler to think of things that way, but what happens when you feel something positive about one of those associated activities or thoughts? What happens when the realities of nuance make you doubt your own feelings about all the individual wisps in that cloud of "toxicity"? I have spent too long doubting myself, both as someone trying to upkeep the understanding of others as toxic and as someone who has been called toxic themself.

Here's what I propose:

• that people take breaks from the bad experiences and communicate what they can, depending on how versed they are in the new Method of Communication and Boundaries (VI Edition (tm) ). If someone is expected to be Emotionally Mature (tm) for the sake of avoiding being Toxic, many would rather remain silent than risk saying the wrong thing.
• for those taking a break from one another, think about what parts you're looking to avoid and what parts you don't mind. The decision to terminate a relationship should happen because the "bad" outweighs the "good", not because of a minority of maladaptive behavior that you've been taught to consider toxic and avoid at all costs.
• There's black-and-white thinking, and self-doubt, and the isolation of each side from one another when there could be mutual growth on both sides, in differing but adjacent directions. Not everyone can or should have the same moral ideology. It should be a color wheel more than it should be a binary of liberal and conservative; old and new; grumpy and woke. What if we listened to our own experiences and expressed our anger to each other when we got angry? Instead of hiding our emotions away and resurfacing with refined argumentative points? Maybe each side would be less scared of the other. Maybe we'd see each other as human, all of us, and we'd know that no one is Emotionally Mature.
• No one is toxic. There are only the people you choose not to see anymore, because you weighed the variables of your experience and picked the option that made more sense to you. I propose that we each "take what is useful and leave the rest" (-Bruce Lee, I believe?).

(6/4/23, 11:38 p.m.)

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