Twitter Was My Longest Toxic Relationship
This website tried to kill me on more than one occasion. I’ll be sad when it’s gone.
In my twenties, I liked to get involved with big, demanding, controlling personalities. I loved people with theatrical sensibilities and dramatic, all-consuming problems; people with a 24-point plan for cleaning the kitchen counter and no idea how to get through the day without screaming; people who needed you to do everything for them, all the time, and who needed everything to be done in exactly the right way; people who never gave points for trying, people who would melt down if a hair or a word was out of place.
Why did I do this? I liked a challenge, I guess, and I didn’t like myself. Latching on to people with huge, glamorous, terrible personalities allowed me to fade into the background of my own life; I worried so constantly about keeping them happy (which I could never actually do) that I never had to ask what would make me happy. No matter how much of a mess I was, when I was around these people, I looked like the stable, mature partner. I couldn’t focus on my own problems long enough to realize what they were.
Ever since, let’s say, 2010 or so, my intimate relationships have been remarkably peaceful. It was in 2010 that I got serious about Twitter, my best worst boyfriend…
