Toxic Environments

I just cleaned out my fish tank at my office. I've been way too busy for the past month and it was really getting dirty. When I opened the hood, it actually stank! Yuck! As I drained it and refilled it with fresh water I kept thinking about living in toxic environments. We all know that fish die if you don't change the water, if the temperature changes drastically, if you don't take out the toxic chlorine before putting water in the tank. I'm a firm believer in putting Stress Zyme in once a week, which increases the beneficial bacteria which then helps control the ammonia and nitrite. And by the way, don't nitrites and ammonia come from fish shit? The long and short of it is that when their environment becomes contaminated, fish die.

What if we thought about our lives that way? I am not writing about saving the earth from pollutants, right now. (Although I do think that's important.) I mean our own environments in our homes. What if we thought about what we do in our homes and whether they are positive or negative for our well-being? What if we think in terms of people around us being toxic or not? Does our toxicity come from our human waste? So the expression, "What a waste!" applies here on several levels! For so many years I have not felt lovable because the significant person in my life was not loving and not able to love himself or anyone else. Obviously this didn't kill me right away, but 20 years later I'm realizing that my whole outlook on life is damaged by the hostile environment perpetuated by my spouse. He is not a mean person. He doesn't mean to not be loving. He just can't love. He can't love himself, and therefore he can't love others. I'm thinking it was like harmful ammonia and nitrites in my environment. It slowly wore me down. It slowly changed who I was. It slowly ate my life, my love, and my faith away.

All of us have some toxic people in our lives. We can't go out of the house without encountering them. So what do we do about them? I'm choosing not to live with one. What about at work, at church, our "friends," and extended family? I'm being pickier about my "friends." But what is the Stress Zyme that we use to keep the other people who might harm us, from harming us? For some, I suppose it's church, or faith. Hmmm. Not working for me right now, even though it did for so many years. I guess for me, it's my other friends, people who I know really love me. But how do you know who really loves you? How do you know who's just harming you? I obviously don't have good radar on that. Too bad there aren't little signs on people's foreheads, "Toxic! Beware!" I'm learning (now that I am relying more on friends than on a spouse for my emotional support) that some who seemed to be friends for years, aren't. Some who are new in my life are totally wonderful friends! Some think they are toxic and they are not. Some think they know it all for my life, and they cause a lot of harm! How do I know which is which? How do we know who to trust before it's too late?