Having to End a Friendship

 I honestly should have ended it long ago. But I kept keeping on in hopes that they would change. After all, they;'ve both said it themselves; I'm like a sibling to them, and their children view me as part of the family, as I've been watching them, caring for them, and loving them ever since they both were babies. This friendship is almost 5-6 years in the making. When we first met, we bonded over geeky stuff. When the mom was about to have her baby, I watched the other one while she and her husband went to the hospital. When my mental health began to take a turn for the worse and resulted and self destructive tendencies, they both opened up about their own mental illnesses. They even spent the night at my house to check in on me when I had a breakdown and ran from their car when they dropped me off. The two of them were the reason I started to be more open about my mental health, and the reason I started to seek help.

It was like that for a while. We were all chill. But then something changed. Somehow, they seemed to get more and more into the extreme conservative side of things gradually. In a couple years, they went from Bernie supporters to Trump supporters. They took to social media to bash Black Lives Matter, anyone who was anti-police, anyone who was anti-gun or pro gun control, anyone who was liberal, etc. 

Honestly, idgaf about the political part of it. But when I saw them actively posting and picking fights with my extended family on FB (the dad was) about Black experiences, I was heartbroken. It was nothing new, sadly. He always loved to argue on FB. But for him to go out, and defend any murderers at the hands of police (both he and his wife defended the Kenosha shooter's actions and said that the victims and any people protesting were deserving of it, to say that Black Lives Matter is pretty much bunk in his eyes; it hurts. These are two people we pretty much adopted into our family. And for them to just sit there, knowing that our family is Black and posts antiblack garbage like that is just soul crushing. 

Maybe it's my fear of being alone. Maybe that's why I accepted this toxic friendship or kept it going in hopes that it would change. But as time goes on, I realize it most likely won't. So I'm going to have to part ways. It's gonna be hard. So hard. I still love those kids, but I just can't tether myself or relate to anyone who thinks that my experiences and struggles as a black person do not matter. But I have to take the first step. I need to surround myself with people who won't defend a mass murderer or racism