Relationships are an essential part of the human experience and are something that most people can’t survive without. These relationships vary from acquaintances, to friends, to significant others with many variations throughout. The connections that we make with people, especially those that become friends or significant others, become permanent pieces of our lives and who we are as individuals.

Most of the time our friends play a positive role in our lives, leaving us with endless memories of times spent together and the fun we shared. However, sometimes we hold friendships that are extremely toxic, ones we often can’t comprehend their destructive nature until they end in an explosive falling out. I have experienced this firsthand with a friend (We’ll call him Richard), who’s negative impact on my life is still an issue I have to face today.

Richard and I went to school K-12 together, and became friends our sophomore year of high school during Spanish class. We quickly became inseparable best friends that spent summer after summer working and spending time together. By senior year, he was the person that knew everything about my life and I knew everything about his. Even after graduation and I moved away to attend Ferris, we still stayed best friends. We texted every day and spent almost every second of every school break together. My parents were even worried I wouldn’t be home on Christmas day.

The end of my freshman year came and went, our friendship still strong as ever. Summer started like any other, with Richard and I spending almost every day together. He had a girlfriend at the time, who I soon became good friends with because of the amount of time I spent with the couple. As the summer went on, I began to notice changes in Richard. He was growing increasingly disrespectful to everyone around him, especially authority figures. His relationship with his parents and family became almost nonexistent, and he grew distant with his other friends, his girlfriend, and eventually me. We started to have frequent and petty arguments that ranged from the function of organic acids to different anatomical names (yes… we are both nerds). Every conversation seemed to be a contest to be smarter, funnier, and better than each other, and tension between us was at an all-time high.

The end of the summer crept up quickly, and I realized the Richard I now knew was a completely different person from the start of break. I was sad. My best friend didn’t seem like a best friend anymore, but more like a complete stranger. I had a bad feeling that if things continued like they had all summer, our friendship wouldn’t last through my second year of college. But it didn’t even make it to the end of summer.

The beginning of the end of our friendship happened the day we were helping his girlfriend (I’ll call her Melani) move into her new apartment. Later that night we were hanging out with her and her new roommate. Richard and I began arguing, however this disagreement was different from the rest. It was personal. I finally confronted him about his lack of respect for his parents and other authority figures. The argument quickly escalated him shouting and eventually punching me several times. Melani and her roommate swiftly separated us to prevent me from retaliating.

In the days following our fight, I tried many times to contact Richard and make amends. Melani tried to convince him multiple times to talk to me, and even discovered that Richard knew he was in the wrong for punching me and becoming so angry.The days turned into weeks with no word from my best friend. Melani and Richard broke up a few weeks later, ending any communication I had with him. I didn’t hear from him until three months later.

The month following our fight was the worst 4 weeks of my life. I didn’t have someone that I talked to every day, I didn’t have a best friend anymore, and I’ve never felt more alone. The beginning of my sophomore year was a bag of mixed emotions. I was reunited with my friends from school, but I still felt very alone and began to feel depressed. I blamed myself for the ending of our friendship, and became distant with my other friends in fear of ruining those relationships as well.

Slowly the pain of losing my best friend began to fade, but never truly went away. I would always be reminded of the adventures we would go on, the endless laughter, and countless other memories. But even as I thought about Richard less and less, I started to feel more and more empty inside. I didn’t feel like myself, and I eventually realized that I wasn’t the same Chris that had been friends with Richard. It wasn’t until he finally contacted me that I accepted this.

Richard texted me for the first time after our fight at 3 a.m. almost three months later. Along with an empty apology, I discovered he was extremely intoxicated and under the influence of a combination of drugs. It was then that I finally realized how much better I am without him in my life. If our friendship had truly meant anything to him, it wouldn’t have taken three months and a handful of pills to patch it up.

After this interaction with him I began thinking a lot about our friendship and the impact it had on my life and my actions. During our time as friends my personality had transformed and began to match his. I went to my first party with him, drank for the first time with him, and even though I consciously made these decisions myself, they were heavily influenced and encouraged by him. When I couldn’t hang out, he would convince me to sneak out. When he wanted to go to a party, I would tell my parents that I was just going to the movies. My grades fell drastically, I started caring more about having the coolest party story than I did about my school work and future. I became extremely judgmental, and developed a chronic bad attitude towards everyone and the world around me. I stopped taking responsibility for my actions, and blamed my failures on others. He had been slowly molding me to act more like him, and looking back, I don’t like the person I became.

The emptiness I had been feeling wasn’t just because I didn’t have a best friend anymore, I didn’t have my own personality. When I wasn’t surrounded by the overbearing bad influence of Richard, I didn’t feel like myself. I hadn’t been for a long time. My Saturday nights went from frat parties and beer pong tournaments to study sessions in the library. I no longer had the urge to be rebellious just to impress people around me. I started holding myself accountable for my grades and responsibilities.

With all this being said, I don’t regret my friendship with Richard. Melani and I became very close through this experience and she is now one of my best friends. My still new and ever growing friendship with her will be something I will be forever thankful for. With her help I have been able to end almost all of the bad habits that came with being friends with Richard.

Even though our friendship brought on months of sadness and emptiness, I learned a life-long lesson from my acquaintance with Richard: Don’t ever change yourself for worse because someone tells you to. Change is not always bad. As college students, we are still molding our personalities and determining a plan for the future. It is easy to stray off the trail to success, especially when we surround ourselves with negative people. Good friends will encourage you to better yourself, not lead you down a path of self-destruction. We encounter many toxic people throughout our lives, people whose waves of harmful influence will try to knock us down and lead us in the wrong direction. But there’s not a single person on Earth that is worth negatively changing your identity, not even your best friend.