Toxic Love Is Hard To Shake.

And I love him.

I think there will always be a place inside myself that I love him. Love that is driven deep beneath the memories of bitter pain and disappointment that sometimes surfaces and reminds me of his smile and warm caress. Toxic love is a bitch to bury.

We didn’t use the term “toxic” when I was growing up. A child of the seventies, we just knew single moms were becoming a thing. We knew families were changing. We knew “boys will be boys” and “girls are the girls” and relationships either made it to silver and gold or became the step-families that became familiar in households or on TV. The sitcoms of the day framed the narrative never accounting for the realities.

Maybe we just didn’t have the words to categorize the truth, or the abuse — or maybe we just needed to find one, eventually. It’s a term tossed out now so casually that I still don’t know if we are using it correctly.

In my four plus decades of navigating this world, I’m convinced we have all been toxic to someone at some point. And we’ve all felt the sting of that poison.

In some way or another.

We’ve all bartered and sold our souls and stayed — some far longer than we ever should, some bailing a tad early, never able to reconcile fully if the gas-lighting was ours to own. Or a light finally went on — eventually.

You like to believe you grow.

You like to believe you shed the skins of naive and transform into a liberated, empowered person who would never again allow the pattern to return again. You age in years and wisdom. You age in grace and expectations. You age in a journey that just takes you back sometimes to trying to wrestle through what is healthy and what’s just commitment. Without settling.

But what’s so horrible about settling? What’s so wrong with being mad deep in love and in hope that you’d barter a few negotiations? Why wouldn’t we entertain that transaction — and why are we surprised when we discover our bulls and bears didn’t quite offer every return we expected? On our investment.

Those are the questions we ask of ourselves.

Toxic love is hard to shake.

And our own toxicity — well, that’s a self reflection most aren’t willing to make.

And time moves on. And decisions get made. And forward we go staring at stuff that we bought to build a home as it walks out our front door because bills matter far more now than ever. And one foot in front of another.

I remember when my mother sold the diamond soldiers with the ruby hats. One by one. And then every charm — never to be seen again. Because instead of staying, she left. That lesson is one, this middle aged mother I am, will never forget.

Toxic isn’t worth it. No matter what.

But those lines. Those hard and fine lines that make us question where the love went. Where it began. If love is the word we are supposed to use in referencing it. They are blurry and messy and hard and horrible and a process that can take us to depths and heights we could never have imagined, if not for the journey.

And we love them. And will always love them. While we navigate a future without them — what could have been. We love. And we say we can better the rest and figure out a way to do the hurt and resentment and failed expectations as friends, someday. While we realize, slowly realize, how hard that choice is to make.

I will love him. And want for him. And want him to want for him. While I know that sentiment was always what drove the settling for the broken, shattered expectations — and so we move on.

Step by step.

Telling everyone around us we are over it. When we know that the poison is just out of our system, but the delivery method is still very much a part of our medicine cabinet. Until it isn’t.

Toxic love is hard to shake.

It’s just not easy.

But maybe eventually that dust settles itself better than if we’d settled ourselves — and like those diamond ruby charms my mother had to sell, we find that love that’s buried gets to rest in peace.

Maybe.

Or, maybe we are writing and reading and relating to the raw reality that toxic is just a bitch to beat.

Toxic love is hard.

But we’ve got this. That, I believe.

While this piece is a prose covering the navigation of very physically safe, yet, emotionally troublesome worry in partnership/relationship with others, if you are a woman or man who feels unsafe, threatened, alone or afraid in your relationship, please, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline today.

Elizabeth Grattan is a broadcast talent and writer who has covered current events, human interest and social justice for over twenty-five years. Her loves are laughter through tears, old ball caps, reasonably priced blended reds and her dream come true little man. Find & friend Elizabeth on FB or follow along on Twitter.