Poison

so i started to feel depressed again about a month ago, slight symptons.. and at its most heightened point, i was ready to book a ticket back to the US, convinced escaping Chiang Mai was the only way to escape the feeling. Although escapism can be seen as a bad coping method, i also know that it was the coping method that did finally work to break my downfall my third year of law school. And was was the lesson learnt from that last year? There are some environments that are toxic for me and in order to stay a happy healthy person I must avoid such environments, if I recognize I am in one, i must actively and decisively try to get out.

But how could all of Chiang Mai be a toxic environment? It was the nurturing environment that healed me at first... and I still loved my job, i love the gym, I love my quality of life, i loved my house ---- but did I love my home?

It took me a minute to decipher the root cause of my unhappiness, there was poison in my home, my roommate, whom as a roommate I got along well with, habit-wise and we had this big beautiful house where people always dropped by, a dream for me, but unfortunately this home had become the toxic environment.

And here's the thing, my roommate or now ex-roommate at the heart of hearts, i think is just an insecure girl trying to figure out her place in the world. And I, as an older friend who felt more secure at least in the sense of knowing myself (my insecurities are there just more regarding career path, etc) felt that i could help increase her confidence and navigate her through the stage -- or at the very least I could ignore it when the insecurity led to bragging or manipualation or just insensitive comentary. But it started to poison my mind, and it started to be targetted to me. All of a sudden I became a threat, and for someone whose maturity is like that of a adolescent female bully the likely response to a person who seems threatening, who heightens your sense of feeling insecure, is to BRING THAT PERSON DOWN. And here i was idly standing by allowing her to do it to me. A part of that is on me. I should know better than that, but at least once i recognized the poison i uprooted myself, left the house and am trying to carve out a better life for myself.

Okay, and I was going to just get up and move out without saying anything, but I felt a need to show my cards and tell her how I felt, to call her out on her behavior. And now I feel that its started a war. Whereas in my sense of adulthood, such falling outs, are just that, two people agreeing or at least recognizing that they can't get along in the same way they used to, you go your separate ways and call it a day. I realize that I sought the advice of some friends of mine who are also friends of hers in the moments leading up, but afterwards, leave them out.

BUT NOW SHE's desperately seeking to pull every person that the two of us have ever known, people who have long left chiang mai with no prospect of return, into the mess. What is she looking for? A mutual friend says she just wants reassurance that she is a good person. But yet she is painting a picture of me as a crazy person. I am still trying to demonstrate some level of maturity and maintain quiet but every time another person tells me how she is running her mouth it makes me hate her, hate her in a way that I didn't before, i just needed to escape her before. And this hatred, she is doing exactly what i was scared of, she is making me want to stoop to her level and start a war. And here is the thing about being an insightful and perceptive person, is you can either use it for good, help people gain confidence, make them feel good about themselves, which is what i try to do, especially in my working life, OR YOU CAN USE IT FOR EVIL, and bring a person down. But i Can't remember the last time i was tempted to play games like this, ,maybe when i was 12? Her poison is so powerful it making me want to regress.

So i escaped one level of toxicity, i no longer feel depressed. But this growing hatred and desire for revenge, it is still floating inside of me. I am sure that with time it will die. I've got to just remember that she has already depleted me of so much energy and time and anymore i spend on it, is again on me, only a disservice to myself.