That sounds like an obvious statement, doesn’t it? It sounds like a Captain Obvious statement, but for my own understand I am choosing to break it down, because it’s so much deeper than just setting a boundary.
It’s about understanding what those boundaries mean. There are people in my past that I have even recently cried for, one in particular who is homeless and living with severe addiction and mental health issues.
I love this person because she’s one of the many reasons I am still alive, there is not a single month that doesn’t go by when I don’t think of J at least once.
I will never forget sitting in a parking lot discussing sucicide, when both of us said at the same time “I’m not in the mood to die today,” it sort of became our mantra.
It still is, and it’s something I plan to get tattooed as soon as possible, but as much as I love this person I know that we are on two separate journey’s that cannot come together right now.
I am not ready to support her, and while that may sound selfish, it’s really not. She needs people who are willing to be there to help her out and I am not capable of that either physically emotionally or monetarily. I just don’t have it in me, because I am too focused on my own healing.
Knowing that I am choosing not to go out and look for her, because I don’t want to give her hope that I can help her when I know that I absolutely can not. I don’t have anything to offer her, that is me, setting a healthy boundary.
Our friendship was beautiful, largely because it was filled with alcohol and drugs, and both of us are healing from that all these years later. While I wish her well, I have to move on in hopes that one day our path’s will cross again.
There are other people in my life I will never go back to. Not because I don’t love them, but because being around them nearly got me killed the first time around and I don’t want to go backwards.
I don’t know what I am moving toward but I know that it is a lot better than what was so why would I go backwards? That is setting a boundary.
When it comes to people online there are people I genuinely enjoy conversing with, but at the end of the day with the exception of the rare few those relationships are tenuous at best.
That’s me setting a boundary. I don’t have friends, I have allies supporters readers and fans. The few friends I do have know who they are and that they are cherished beyond all reason. They are the ones who push me to keep going even when I want to give up and that’s hard to get used to.
I will never forget the way Dawson looked at me one day and yelled “you’re Surrey Crew, for life, people like you, get used to it.” I’m still getting used to it but I am trying. I set a boundary with him too, because as much as I loved him, I don’t have racists in my life.
Sometimes when we trust too early we get hurt, get hurt enough and you learn to recognize the signs, and once you do that the boundaries get set without even realizing it.
Sometimes I have to pull myself back largely because I set a boundary too firmly, or I let myself slack too much, and warning signs go off that tell me whether to relax or tighten the rope.
We learn these tools through experience, it’s called life, you learn as you go. I will say that I have to work on my meditation, largely because as much as meditation helped me figure a lot of this stuff out, the power of it forced me to pull back on how much and how often I let myself meditate.
That’s another boundary.
You learn about them by looking at yourself in the mirror, by staring into your soul and looking at all the broken parts as carefully as if you were holding a piece of broken glass.
I remember back in school when teachers would criticize my work, I used to think that they were all hating on me because of the colour of my skin, and while some certainly were, it took me a long time to recognize that what they were doing was actually teaching me to be better
I had a perfection complex in that I hated looking at my work and seeing where I could do better, I still have that problem. I throw these thoughts into the universe and refuse to look back at them because “I’ve already done that, been there, I can move on now.” Setting a boundary between myself and true growth is a problem that I am only beginning to understand and work through.
I often joke that I am a “Learning Bot”, in this time of freedom from rapists and pedophiles, I am learning all of the things I didn’t have time or energy to learn when I was a kid, I am learning to relax my perfection complex and look at the reasons someones attention might make me feel uncomfortable.
I am realizing that sometimes it’s not them, it really is me, and I am working on that so to all those who are supporting me by being a friend, ally or friend I thank you for your patience.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 