By Amelia Rose Ritthaler
With a new decade upon us, students across campus rang in the new year by setting resolutions to become a better person. Third-year chemistry student, Lila Jones, sought to start the year by cutting off all toxic friends, but after just two weeks says she is “really fucking bored now.”
Jones sat down with The Eye to discuss the change she made in her life and why she regrets everything.
After drunkenly befriending four girls during her program’s frosh three years ago, Jones thought university would be smooth sailing. But by the time midterm season hit in October 2017, Jones knew she had signed herself up for the most toxic friend group in all of southern Ontario.
One of Jones’ friends, who asked to remain anonymous for the sake of her future children, slighted Jones from the start. Everytime the group went out clubbing on the weekends, that friend would wait to see who Jones was eyeing on the dance floor and then violently storm onto the dance floor and take her eye candy of the night out from under her.
Jones said she spent three years brushing these instances off. She rationalized this toxic situation by convincing herself that she and her friend had the same type, but Jones just wasn’t as confident in pursuing them.
By the end of 2019, Jones realized her love life has been non-existent since the start of her friendship with that friend. Jones regrets cancelling her friend as now her love life is still nonexistent AND she has no drama to complain about to her other friends.
Jones says her self-esteem and happiness levels have been higher than she ever thought possible but added, “At what cost?”
She argued that no amount of personal joy makes life better than the rush of having a friend say something backhanded to her during brunch.
Beyond that, Jones says the cancellation of her toxic friends has created a world where people ask her a question and then want to listen to her answer the question rather than cutting her off immediately to talk about themselves. “I haven’t shared a complete thought in years and at this point it’s too late to start now,” admits Jones.
“Back when I had toxic friends, I used to keep good news to myself to avoid making my friends jealous and saying undermining things. Now I have no reason to keep things to myself, it’s a nightmare.”
Jones’ day-to-day chance of death has decreased significantly as she no longer has friends forcing her to chug litres of Fireball every Thursday night. She used to attend her Friday morning lecture while still drunk—making the class incredibly engaging. She attends her 11 a.m. class on Fridays completely sober now and describes the experience “unworthy of my attendance.”
She will continue on with her New Year’s resolution for the rest of January. But if things remain this uneventfully average, she will return to her friends who, even though they made her feel awful, at least made her feel something.
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