Toxic Crusader

This is my first post to Substack, and going forward the majority of posts will be for paid subscribers. There will still be lots of public posts, but if you want the juicy sexy posts and want to support me, you can subscribe at the bottom.

In my late twenties, sat around a pool in a villa in the Costa Del Sol, oesophagus deep in nothing but the sangria and prawns that had sustained us for days, listening to Armand Van Helden’s ‘You Don’t Know Me’, my best friends and I decided to cut out all toxic relationships from our lives. Romantic and platonic. We knew some specific people would be clinger ons, and if they clung on and survived then fair dos to them they deserved to carry on, but essentially we were now grown women. Grown women do not need unnecessary bitching and sabotage in our lives. Grown women do not need negative people dragging us down with them whilst we were actually thriving, and finally grown women do not need toxic male relationships that don’t go anywhere, and gaslight, gatekeep and prevent us from girlbossing our way to a happy and harmonious life, and there were specific people that had to fuck off. 

The first person to get the chop, was my friend's relationship with a sort of married man ‘Gas’ (not to be confused with my Gas Man, tradies don’t really have very imaginative nicknames do they) who kept promising her that he would leave his wife or had left his wife, and in fact had just been stringing her along and having his cake and eating it. There were a few more people discussed, but it was a unanimous agreement that a mutual friend who did nothing give us backhanded compliments, be judgemental, be brutally negative to be around and to be honest was a fucking loser dragging us down with her, had to go.

To be fair to us all, when we arrived back home, we kept to our words and the cleanse of the toxic relationships commenced and were ultimately all successful. In that tradition I really didn’t have any more toxic friendships for the entirety of my thirties. Years of drama free group chats and girls days out. If I met someone new and there was even a hint of chaotic energy, I would cut them off. If someone old started creating possible problems, the stance was firm, get them out of my life. 

I started talking to Irish Guy in the first year of the pandemic, and we talked. Or rather he talked. We would voicenote each other all day every day, as for some lockdown reason or another we couldn’t see each other. We had lots in common and it was easy to listen to his funny long rants and opinions. He didn’t mind double texting -  leaving 20 voice notes for me to come back to and listen to was the norm. He was and is in fact the very definition of a charmer. That was great for me, sometimes I just want to be low-effort and listen, or offer advice. 

I should mention that it transpired he had a girlfriend who he lived with but they were both very unhappy and he was going to break up with her. Which he did, which I talked him through. There was a part of me that thought maybe after this we might give things a go, although at this point we had become friends more than potential love interests. Someone I could tell the most boring mundane bits of my life to but also send pictures of my tits to and get a gratifying response. 

Except it was really only ever his mundane bits of life that we discussed and never my own. It became pretty obvious that I was just his emotional sounding board for life. His boring, too many drugs taking, drowning in vodka life. I can recall huge swathes of his life, his anecdotes. His friends and family and extended family members' names. I don’t think he even knows my mum's name. 

The closer we became the easier it was to argue like boyfriend and girlfriend. I never thought I would have a platonic relationship where it would be even possible to have deep domestic style rows with someone who I wasn’t tied to in any way but our friendship. Normally finances or the dividing of chores could only bring this sort of venom out. But speaking about this with other friends, it apparently isn’t entirely an uncommon experience? 

I could never tell if he was fucked, but when he was, he was vicious, coiled like a spring, his charming way with words became incredibly personal and cutting, ultimately devastating to me. But he would always apologise and then we would be talking and laughing about every topic under the sun. Sometimes even the arguments were a fun way to spend time. He was intoxicating to me. But intoxication became just fucking toxic pretty quickly and, fed up with being his weird little emotional punching bag I told him to go to therapy and leave me alone. I blocked him. He blocked me and that was that. 

Except it wasn’t, because I was addicted to the fake attention he gave me. Nine months later… in a very very weak moment “recovering from a kidney failure operation” I rang him. He answered immediately and I just sobbed down the phone, off my face on IV oxycodone, that I nearly died and I missed him and why wasn’t he here. He was, unsurprisingly, tripping on acid at the time and we had a weird conversation about how he had been to therapy and wanted us to talk again. Honestly two people absolutely out of their minds having this kind of conversation wasn’t really productive, but we did start talking again. 

This time things were different and we started to be more romantic than friends, he wasn’t so argumentative, we sent nudes, we talked and planned trips for when I was better. But then he was hot and cold with me again. Being distant, and the only time I can defend him, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go into another relationship again and should maybe be alone. During all this shall we shan't we, I met my boyfriend, and happy for me, Irish Guy and I agreed to keep things platonic. 

So we remained friends throughout the past few years, albeit with a few hissy fits and strops where he would get drunk, argue with me about the Labour Party, or some insignificant thing to me that would get a rise, I would stop talking for a bit and so on. But these spells never lasted long. 

It was during these last 6 months, I noticed that the arguments began to get severely repetitive. He would mention a hardship he had suffered like how his mum had had cancer ten years ago. My Dad also had gone through pretty serious cancer, around ten years ago and I would empathise how it was a really shit time. But no, no one had endured quite like Irish Guy and he would tell me WE ARE NOT THE SAME. Those were his words that he liked to use. We are not the same. 

As we had both grown so close, it meant that I actually knew about his entire life. We had had those long into the night chats about growing up, first kisses, losing our virginities, our silly first office jobs. I also knew that we both grew up as working class. Irish Guy especially having migrated from Ireland in the late 80s. Something I always assumed would unite and lend understanding to each other. 

Because I got so unwell, I currently live on benefits, something which he also knew. Benefits, living in council housing, living on the poverty line was something I had experienced with my entire life. Despite earning an eye watering salary, and having been brought up in a nice North London area in nice privately rented flats, he would scream at me that he had in fact not only had it worse than me, but in fact anyone. Not only that, but I couldn’t ever begin to understand what poverty was like. WE ARE NOT THE SAME. 

So, you can never truly know what someones lived experience is like, and no one person has had exactly the same life experiences, despite what Instagram memes tell me. But we have empathy. Even with empathy I always did my dutiful punching bag job and would just take it from him. Even when I offered to help him navigate things like benefit systems for his Mum, or his debt, and even physically drive him anywhere he needed to go, I would always be met with, YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND, WE ARE NOT THE SAME, and then it escalated. Despite the fact I am a disabled woman with a severe mental illness, I actually “didn’t know anything about adversity”. I should just “do a sit up” and that would cure everything. Any of my accomplishments and achievements in life were often brought up and I was told they meant nothing because they were stupid or easy to obtain. 

I am certain that anyone reading this is screaming at me WHY ARE YOU TAKING THIS ABUSE CHARLOTTE? WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU? When telling my friend about this and my embarrassment of taking this kind of abuse, he kindly told me this:

It was true. Unlike the obvious toxic friends of the past, the constant blur of wanting to help someone and trying to be a good friend meant that I had let him in. Let him have access to my emotions that I only reserved for a couple of friends and romantic partners. Because of our closeness, because I had let him in, I just let him do this. Over and over and over. Until I obviously snapped. Number blocked and deleted. It was done. There isn’t much to say about this. There was no huge blow out argument, just a few choice words and it was done. 

Already I can feel a pang of, maybe we should just make up? I am old now and don’t have lots of friends to dispose of anymore! But that is just the toxic shit leaving my body. I will ascend, and I will make 27 year old Charlotte, sunburned, filled with gambas pil pil and sangria, really fucking proud. 

This piece was hugely cathartic for me to write. It was embarrassing to be in any type of toxic abusive relationship, but one I could get out of without any repercussions? Genuinely seemed quite insane. After sharing this experience with friends, it turned out I was not alone. Dick Appointments is about ‘sex and relationships’ and that can mean all types of relationships, so I hope that this resonated with people. I will be back to lewd and crude next time. Thanks for reading. 

Just to let you know again that after a long break, I have moved platforms to here, Substack. Going forward the majority of posts will be for paid subscribers. There will still be lots of public posts, but if you want the juicy sexy posts and want to support me, you can subscribe here.