I broke it off with a friend like two years(?) ago because each time I visited was more depressing than the last until after that last time I was like, fuck it. I just can’t listen to you complain any more. This place is so fucking filthy and stinks of cigarette smoke and the microwave smells like a dead rat and there’s filth so thick where the walls meet the floors that if you ever actually got around to cleaning it you would have to start with a putty knife and your dog’s hair is falling out — I can’t bear to eat anything here. Would you stop complaining about how your wife never cleans I mean she’s on those monster antidepressants ever since your son drowned which was how long ago but which is how we got to be close when my wife and I came right after it happened and stayed for like a week and made breakfast for everybody because you guys were half dead with grief. I kept visiting long after my wife gave up but now I’m done. I never said how I felt all this time and that’s a problem of my own but it doesn’t matter — I’m done. I never again called or emailed.

Then my brother’s prison boyfriend look I know you helped my brother out of one or two jams but why the fuck are your writing me these whiny letters begging me to get you coffee in your commissary account when I just put $30 there and my friend who can’t afford it put put $50 what the fuck did you do with the $80 that you have to whine at me about how ashamed you are to beg from the other prisoners (you lying asshole) I mean give me a fucking break!

Not that I said anything. I just started throwing the guy’s letters away unopened. He won’t be out of the slammer until 2054. By that time I will be 104 but I don’t expect to live that long.

Toxic or not, I had to get those two out of my life. Whatever word you use, some people just drag you down with their fucked up lives. You just gotta walk away.