Going through a mental health breakdown makes you have to face all the poisonous things that you have allowed to make residence inside your life. Traumas yes but also self-sabotaging behaviours and people and things that you don’t actually like but who still occupy space in your life. It is sobering. At first, it feels hopeless. You know you have to get rid of everything because it is literally poisoning you, choking your ability to even engage with the world to ask for help. But it is everything that you may have defined as your life and your being. Who are you when everything is amuptated?
For me, it made me start creating boundaries. And that is how boundary drawing should be. It can’t be taught from a therapy textbook or from a social-religious set of rules. You have to nurture, craft and constantly tend to your boundaries like a garden. Anything else is but a concrete wall which can be broken and will most certainly invite attack as well as imprison you.
Boundaries start with knowing who you are, who you want to be for the rest of your life. From there, it becomes the process of deciding what you want in your life. What should be allowed the privilege of your worry? Who should be permitted access to your compromises?
And it is not transactional either. After all, what tangible value can be drawn from choosing to love your parents or your children? The social respectability is but a flimsy concert ticket. Really, nobody cares, not even if you brag about it on Instagram. The experience is everything, how it shapes you on an ongoing basis – with the wounds it causes you as well as what flowers it seeds in your being.
I’m watching a film called ‘Blue Jay’ about two people who once knew each other, reconnecting by chance decades later. They are likely the same age as me. The film is in black and white which would seem like an auteur conceit but it is refreshing in this case. It feels clean of the media burdens normally laid on us like lines on actors faces, cancellable decisions of set etc.
He tells her what he does for a living and she asks,
“Do you not like it?”
I realised that I tend to ask these questions of people, even those I don’t know that well. Are you happy? What bothers you about your current life? I’m really interested in these questions about myself as well as about other people. But not everyone feels that way. Denial feels like anathema to me but for a lot of people it is life and I don’t have the right to call it wrong.
Should I stop asking? No. This is who I am, deeply invested in the depths of living. It is an honest signal of who I am. It may be an invitation to someone who has never been asked how they really feel. It could be a threat to someone who, well, I don’t know what makes a person live in a way that inviting vulnerability is a threat but they do exist. It’s up to them to decide how to respond to what life has offered them in the form of my question.
Sometimes people don’t behave well. They call me weird, they are nasty, they turn judgement or bullying onto me. That is the ticket price for my curiosity. That’s boundary drawing too. Respecting that other people have the right to their journeys towards drawing boundaries.
It also makes me realise that most people really like me. I always knew I was well-respected but it always felt like people did not really like me. But people’s reactions are not always their feelings. I should have known that. Deep feelings are often so scary that we behave in the exact opposite way. No, there is no treasure buried in this wall is still how we navigate our adult lives. And that is touching. It makes me realise I have a wonderful life. I seek depths in lives and I find it. Like deep pools of water, I am content to sit by the surface and ponder their beauty. Even if they’re hidden behind people’s actions and words. It’s okay, that’s the price of living.
~O~O~O~O~O~O~
I am frequently told that my listening, my presence in people’s lives feels non-judgemental. I don’t think that is true. I do make judgements. I have to; they are an integral part of protecting oneself and separating oneself from dissolving in the world. But yes, my interest in what people are saying, in contemplating the poignancy of human emotions usually overrides any visible judgement. Judgements are a kind of boundaries but bad ones. They’re akin to those striped horizontal bars that the police places across sensitive pathways to slow people down and let them know that they are about to be interrogated or treated with suspicion. I don’t think they’re very useful in my life. I do not have a paramilitary force ready to counter any attack. And most people do not come prepared to bomb your lives…or at least I need to believe that to survive. So what use is a filmsy plastic barricade that screams about mistrust?
I think what people are responding to is my empathy. What is empathy but a stubborn belief that all that is human bears witnessing? The good, the bad, the fragile, the rocky. My recent efforts in drawing boundaries make these clearer to me.
My empathy for a person does not have to mean absolution of their sins. It does not have to mean taking on their burdens. It simply means to be willing to hold witness to everything that they are in the world, even the things they find unable to admit to. We are all really quite transparent about the things we are most ashamed of. But I am realising that it is a good idea for me to keep these insights to myself.
It feels like a relief to be seen. But it also feels scary. People must have the choice to decide how they want to navigate that. Thus boundaries also mean respecting other people’s right and likely decision to walk away from you. It’s better for people who can’t or won’t witness your entireity to exit your life. They leave room for the ones who will bear witness in full. Even if that’s only your own self. Boundaries make me feel less lonely, less needy.
~O~O~O~O~O~O~
Update @ 9:11pm: I wrote this post yesterday and scheduled it to publish this morning. While sharing it to my Instagram Stories, I realised that I had used this photograph before. That led me to a post about abundance, which seems related to the ideas in this post. For how can you possibly think to establish boundaries until you feel the aliveness of being abundant?
Then Tanu posted a reel about Book Garden asking viewers to share if they felt so inclined. It reminded me that I must ask for help if I want to receive help. This is not the same as vomitting demands onto the world or lashing out. Another integral aspect of boundaries is to realise that they are also connections, not barriers. And connections need to be respected before calling on them with need. They also need to be trusted and that’s only possible if you have done the work of nurturing them. Asking for help is an act of dignity and then courage. It only becomes weak when it comes from a place of shame, denial or entitlement (which are all the same thing). So once again, the work of powerful boundaries starts with knowing yourself.
Later in the day, I found myself in two separate situations of targetted attack and unwarranted hostility/complicity from other people. At that very minute a friend texted me their thoughts on my post (friends, dear friends, usually I badger you to comment instead of messaging me but what a boon this one turned out to be!). It was a powerful reminder of the power I possess in holding my ground without relinquishing either dignity or my peace of mind. When somebody misbehaves, it says something about them and very little about me. I stand witness without being run over by their misbehaviour, without reacting to it either.
People don’t like that by the way, as I realised from the second attack, seemingly from a different quarter but rather obviously linked. The power of silent witnessing forces people to face things that are uncomfortable and that’s usually a recipe for additional misbehaviour. I found myself needing a meditation to calm down. Witnessing with strength and vulnerability still means taking time to account for wounds and heal. And the lesson that showed up said, “Remember only love is real.” And on my way home, a dog that was sleeping peacefully chased me down a road I’ve walked hundreds of times before.
So here’s a radical thought. Every form of the ways people (and perhaps all living beings) engage with you is a form of love. Even the misbehaviour is just a warped form of love. And that is not to say that it must be tolerated or accepted. All living creatures offer up themselves. It is up to you (and me) to discern what we want to accept. Suddenly the Mary Oliver couplet makes such perfect sense. Sometimes it takes time and effort, but even the bad behaviour is a gift when it comes bearing insights for your garden.
“Someone I loved once gave me a box of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
If you are reading this, I thank you for the love you are sending my way with your attention and time. And I wish for the same to return to you, exactly the way you send it to me, with no additional baggage of mine. Well, maybe take the memory of a flower from my garden. The sweetness of my roses is for everybody.
