‘EDIT YOUR FRIENDS!’ – WHY IT’S THE BEST ADVICE ANYONE CAN EVER GIVE YOU.

The writing process for the previous two blog posts reminded me of a lot more that I wanted to discuss. In the previous post, I mentioned what triggered my body to cause me a seizure. One of those triggers was stress. The blog post before that heavily mentioned Ashton Kutcher. Earlier this year, he came back to acting and starred in the somewhat forgettable rom-com, ‘Your Place Or Mine’ with Reese Witherspoon. The duo’s lack of chemistry made more headlines than the movie itself. I watched the movie when it first came out. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it wasn’t so bad either. If you want a super light watch where you don’t want to think too much, or if you want to put something on for background noise, then this movie is just right for you.

Nevertheless, no matter how terrible some of her movies might be, any Reese Witherspoon movie is worth watching; at least for me. Obviously, I’m a fan. I also tend to watch and read a lot of the interviews that she’s done over the past decades. Something she said more recently, though, recently caught my attention. Last month, Witherspoon attended the NBC News at the annual INBOUND conference hosted by HubSpot in Boston.While there, she told a producer:

“Edit your friends. Everybody out there over 40 knows. If you aren’t adding to my life, get the heck outta my life. My grandma used to say people are radiators or drains. Stick with radiators. Rejection was such an early piece of my life that I learned a long time ago that other people’s opinions of me are none of my business. Other people’s opinions of you, and everyone’s gonna have an opinion, doesn’t matter. I really don’t care what anybody thinks. I’m gonna do my work anyway. I’m gonna date whoever I want, go hang out with a friend nobody likes. When you release that feeling of other people’s opinions crushing you or holding you down, you’re free. You’re totally free.”

When I was in Israel, I was having a conversation with my aunt and uncle about friendships, specifically my own friendships. The conversation started when the topic of me being an extreme introvert came up. My uncle said , almost shockingly to my aunt, ‘But she does have friends!’ I do. He knows them because he met some of my friends at my wedding. None of my friends who were at my wedding are my friends now, 7 years later. Since then, just like Reese Witherspoon said, I’ve edited my friendships, and not just once. My college best friend was my maid of honour at my wedding. I was friends with her for 9 years, and even she’s not in my life anymore. I’m sad about it, but our lives are just too different for us to be friends in the present day. We attempted to reconnect a couple of years ago, but it just didn’t work out.

My aunt told my uncle that I didn’t really need friends. That’s not necessarily a true statement. I do need friends. But there are numerous factors that affect my decision making when it comes to friendships. I was mostly a loner as a child, which was why my aunt said what she said. But she didn’t know why I kept to myself. I mostly kept to myself because I was bullied for most of my years in middle school. A lot of that time, I was bullied physically. Of course, it was because I was physically disabled. It was a known fact, and those that bullied me took advantage of the fact that I couldn’t defend myself. That’s why, despite my disability, I learned how to defend myself.

The endless bullying and abuse I went through in middle school caused me a severe childhood trauma. I didn’t make an actual friend until college, and that was because my college friend initially made all the work on our friendship. She confronted me about me not putting much effort, and that was when I did, because I didn’t want to lose her as a friend. I did have friends in between, but all those friendships were one-sided. I didn’t actually care whether they were in my life or not. They were just people I hung out with from time to time.

But it wasn’t just my childhood trauma that cause me to not get close to anyone. It was also the fact that I was raped to caused me to be careless. Later on, it caused me to care too much. I allowed people to treat me like sh*t and cross my boundaries. The longer I was friends with the wrong people, and I could name 3 of them along with their significant others. Their behaviour towards me became abusive, to the point where the behaviour of my rapist and my exes that came after were seemingly more normal. I became so numb to the emotional pain that they brought to me that, at some point, it just became the norm. I allowed those people who were supposed to be my friends to treat me the way that they did because I thought I deserved it.

But I didn’t deserve it. I deserved much better, and once I healed from my trauma after doing so much work on myself, I realized that. And once I realized that, I decided to make changes. I cut them all the 3 main toxic ‘friends’ out of my life completely. They were in the way of me getting better emotionally, mentally, and physically. Once I got to for myself to think and reflect on my former friendships, I realized that they were in the way of my health. Once I cut them out of my life, I noticed that my stress level was lowered, and therefore, I had less seizure frequency.

Not having any of that toxicity and abuse around me was the best thing for me. I could finally breathe. I could finally live. I could finally enjoy being me. I used to talk to these people practically everyday, and I’d see them at least once a month, sometimes even more. My new normal suddenly became that I didn’t have that every day validity anymore, and it was something I had to adjust to. Navigating that new normal wasn’t easy, but it was worth it. I suddenly didn’t just talk about my health crisis. I actually worked through it. I suddenly didn’t just talk about my crumbling relationship with my husband, I worked through those matters with him. And finally, instead of crying to my friends about my infertility struggles, I did all the research in the world and took matters into my own hands into doing everything I could to work through them. I suddenly had time to do all that.

That’s not to say that there weren’t good things about these 3 people. After all, even toxic people have good traits in them I was friends with these people for 3-5 years. I saw the good sides in them and overlooked the toxic traits, which was the main reason why those friendships lasted as long as they did. First, let’s call her X. I was friends with her because she treated me just the same as she’d treat anyone else. She didn’t care about my disability at all. She knew about it, but she never defined me by it, which is more than I can say about most people in my life. Then, there was Y. He was friends with my husband initially, and he greatly supported my husband during a very difficult time. Not many people would stay friends during such a time. Finally, there was Y. She was there during the my most difficult years when epilepsy took over me. She helped go through the trauma post-car accident as she survived a car accident herself. She played the role of a psychologist. She didn’t seem to like it very much when I was getting better and started setting boundaries.

My friend who is friends with Z, who also introduced me to her initially, previously said to me that maybe she and I would be friends when I had a child as Z already had2 children, and therefore, we’d have something to connect us. My friend had a wishful thinking that everything would be back to how it was when the three of us were friends. But having a child made me even more reassured that I will never, ever, ever (like Taylor Swift EVER) be friends with her friend, nor anyone else from my past. I wouldn’t ever want to go back in time and be treated less than. My motto is the following: You want to be friends, let’s be friends. If you don’t then let’s not. But if you do, respect my boundaries, and I’ll do the exact same.

I’m now very happy with my friendships, mainly because I have Reese Witherspoon’s take on it. She said women in their 40’s understand where she’s coming from. But I’m in my 30’s and understand her more than ever. Maybe it’s that I’ve been through enough sh*t to understand my friendships more thoroughly. I understand myself more than I ever did before. I respect myself enough now to not allow anyone in my life to disrespect me and not let any of that disrespect slide, whether it’s my friends or family members. Most importantly, though, I love myself enough to know when it’s time to ‘edit my friendships’ for my own happiness and well-being.

I’d much rather have one or two amazing friends that bring out the best in me than have dozens of friends that make me feel like absolute sh*t. I’d rather have one or two amazing friends that bring out the best in me than have dozens of friends that bring out the worst in me. They say you are who you surround yourself with, and I think it’s so true. I became just as toxic when I was surrounded by toxicity. I became a bully when I was surrounded by bullies. I became a hater when I was surrounded by hatred and anger. And I don’t want to be that. I want to be better. I want to be a good person. I want to be a positive person. That’s why I ‘edit my friends’ from time to time when it’s necessary.