On Boundaries
I’ve been riding my bike to work lately, about a 7.5 mile commute. It’s a nice route, and I enjoy the exercise, but it’s not quite gelling for me yet. I haven’t found my groove, figured out how to meditate or focus on my novel or work or nature of whatever. My mind consistently wanders to “bad” stuff. I start reviewing ugly memories, humiliating moments, faces and actions and fear that makes me so angry. I’ve been trying to shove those thoughts away, because I want to be more productive and happy. I don’t want to dwell.
Then I had this little meltdown, which seemed to me to come out of nowhere. In retrospect, I can see how it’s been building up for a while now. I often get comments about how “well” I’ve done. It’s only been three and a half years since I left Flint, and I have gotten remarkably healthy and together in that time. But every time I think about how “well” I’m doing, I get nervous. It seems like the worst is over, and that immediately and irrationally strikes me as ominous. This is the perfect time to have the rug pulled out from under me! I’ll discover a wellspring of misery and psychosis that I never dreamed existed!
I’m not wrong about this. I’m just blind. I’ve already had the rug pulled out. I already found my well. I was in a shitty job with abusive dynamics. I lived in a dysfunctional household with unbearable roommates. Rug, well, done. The ominous music has been playing for about two years now, and I was just gritting my teeth and covering my ears, telling the stress to go away before it distracted me from sighting the unhappiness that must be on its way.
I always forget that I’m at my best, at my strongest, when everything is going wrong. That’s not a bad way to be necessarily — it’s helped me survive. I just don’t feel strong. I feel like I’m grimly getting on with it. It’s afterwards, when everything is okay and safe, that I fall apart. And yet I still expect that when everything goes bad, I ought to lose my mind, and when everything is well, I ought to be tough and strong. Be tough and strong for what? I don’t have to meditate and therapize and cope and grip white-knuckled to get through a sunny day of joy. A sunny day is when I have the time and space to review myself, my life, the things around me, and decide what to clean and what to keep and what to put away for now.
I was talking to Bear about my favorite memories from the first apartment that was my own. It was maybe two weeks after I had left Flint. Polar and Gregory had come over to help me celebrate. I got obscenely drunk, and Gregory made a pass at me. The next morning, I stumbled out of bed with a terrible hangover. I wet my head, grabbed a huge jug of orange juice from my fridge (because I had been PREPARED), and laid down in the middle of my still-packed apartment in boxers and nothing else. I stared at the ceiling, letting the sunlight crawl over me, listening to the street outside, and chugging back orange juice. I had nowhere to be. I had nothing to do. I had nobody to take care of. I could lie here all day, unwashed and disgusting. If I did get up, it would be to go and do something for myself – to buy trinkets for my apartment, to unpack my things, to write, to watch a movie. I felt happy, but it wasn’t this overwhelming sense that washed over everything. Mostly, I felt even-keeled. Content. There wasn’t too much of anything, and there wasn’t an absence of anything I needed. In that moment of stillness, it suddenly came to me: Gregory had a rat’s face. He’d never been attractive. I’d never loved him like I thought I had. He was going to pretend that pass hadn’t happened, because he was absolutely spineless. And if I didn’t fuck him soon our friendship would end, because the most we’d ever had between us was an unconsummated question mark. Polar meant well but was bad for me; she goaded me into drinking more so I could be her vicarious conduit of happiness and freedom. She would want me to sleep with Gregory, and I would never be able to explain to her why that would be bad for me, and she wouldn’t just take my no at face value. She had little tact, good sense, or dignity, and while I didn’t mind that, I would need somebody who could be wiser and have more boundaries if I was going to survive leaving Flint.
Those seemed like the most depressing thoughts ever to have on such a nice morning. I didn’t want to deal with them then, and in an amazing display of good health, I didn’t. I got up, I showered, I got dressed, and I went to buy myself some treats and trinkets. Time enough for everything, I thought. No need to panic about any one thing.
In the days after leaving Flint, I went remarkably easy on myself. Not to say I didn’t have to practice at it, but looking back, I can see that I was much more willing to be gentle with myself than I am today. I had been through a thing, and I was sick of pushing myself too hard. Whatever I felt was okay. Whatever I thought was okay. Nothing I could see or think or feel would be worse than where I had come from. Nothing I did was right or wrong, or required action: it just was.
I don’t know what happened exactly. Life got in the way. I fell into bad habits. I fell into bad places. I developed new skills, new abilities, and forgot to practice the old ones. I stopped noticing when I was holding on, and I forgot what it felt like to let go. I started falling in love with control again. When I first left Flint, when I first learned to set very strong boundaries, I set them because within those boundaries I was free. Within those boundaries of who I would and would not see, and when I would see them, I was in my underwear drinking orange juice on a nasty carpet, enjoying the sunlight like a cat. Somewhere along the way, my boundaries stopped being about creating something good and started being about limiting something bad. Within my boundaries, I felt trapped. I had strong boundaries because everything outside them was unsafe and unsavory. I had nowhere I could go. Trapped was bad. But dealing with my roommates was worse. Dealing with my boss was worse. So trapped I was.
One of you left a comment noting that while my boundaries were very good, they were perhaps a double-edged sword, maybe something that was preventing me from friendships. That comment really bothered me. Got under my skin. Boundaries have been everything, these past few years. They’ve been God and kittens and sunlight. Boundaries can do no wrong. I’m not giving up boundaries, dammit. I worked so hard to get them, and now, what, now I have to give them up? Now I have to go back to the person I was if I ever want to interact with human beings socially? Godfuckingdammit.
Every now and again, Flint would have a friend breakdown, too. He had a lot of friends, and would often lord it over me, whimsically deciding when I was and was not invited, or when he would ask me to leave so he could be alone with “the boys.” If I didn’t like it, well, get your own friends, he’d say. If I got mad enough, I’d snap back, “You don’t actually have friends, you know. You have pot. All your friends are potheads. Everybody you know you met hooking up with a dealer. If you stopped smoking pot, you’d stop having friends, too. “ He’d brush me off, but I know it must have hurt him, because he’d occasionally have his friendship meltdowns and then sob miserably about how right I was.
Flint wanted friends. He needed people to like him, to listen to him, to look up to him. He needed to own more people than he did. He also needed what all of us do, just basic positive human interactions. And sometimes the reality of what he had – a bunch of potheads who were way, way cooler than him – didn’t match up with what he needed and wanted. He’d break down, be inconsolable for hours, hissing about how nobody has ever loved him. He’d ask me what he was doing wrong. I’d tell him, as obsequiously as I could, “Maybe if you were a little nicer? Maybe if you didn’t insult people so much? Or tell them their opinions were wrong? Maybe you could listen to people when they talk about emotions?” And he’d rage and scream about how that wouldn’t be honest, and honesty was such a core value of his, so what was he supposed to do? Let people say wrong stuff without calling them idiots? If they were idiots, they should know it. If they didn’t want to be called idiots, they had to stop being idiots. So I’d say, “Well, okay, but then you won’t have any friends. It’s kind of one or the other. You don’t get another option.” Eventually, Flint would reaffirm his commitment to honesty and grimly decide he just had to be stronger at heart than all the idiots around him. It was a heavy weight he bore, you guys.
I was right on some level when I told Flint he would have to choose between “honesty” and friendship. But “honesty” wasn’t really what he was talking about. He was talking about his right to abuse the people around him. He framed it as honesty, and I believe he felt this was what other people meant by honesty, because he believed that other people abused naturally and often as well. He wanted to abuse people, and he wanted them to like him anyway. But because he couldn’t confront the fact that he was abusive, he couldn’t stop, modify, or examine his behavior.
I was thinking of him as I reacted to that boundaries comment. I want friends! Then no boundaries. But I want boundaries! Then no friends. Well, what the fuck, then? Finally, I thought, “Maybe what I mean by boundaries is no longer what a boundary is. Maybe the word I’m using is describing a different concept entirely.” I sort of just let my mind flow over that thought for a moment, seeing if anything popped up. And I began to think of my bike rides. All the thoughts that are pushing their way into my brain, the thoughts I keep shoving off and locking down. I’m over that, I think. I’ve done my therapy. I don’t need to wallow. Don’t need to raise my blood pressure. Don’t need to get all sad now.
That’s a boundary, too. By deciding that I’m done with those memories, I’ve decided that I’m done with health. I’m done with freedom. Whatever those memories might unlock for me, might tell me about myself, might motivate me to do, I abdicate that. My boundaries used to tell me that everything I did and felt was okay. Now they tell me that only some things are okay. Others are bad. Other thoughts and feelings are officially Not Me, and they have to exist outside somewhere.
Except, there’s nowhere for that stuff to go. It’s all in my head. There’s no metaphysical dumping ground where I can leave them. They just go to a fragmented place, and seethe and seethe and seethe. Stress bubbles up, anger bubbles up, products of the seething, and those things are also Not Me. Those things also go elsewhere. My boundaries say I am all safe and sane and happy now. I don’t have to Deal With Shit anymore. So, none of this stuff that looks perilously like it needs to be dealt with. That is not okay. I am not okay if I am doing that.
It’s no wonder that in all of this, my old idea of What Friendship Really Is has started to bubble up. Because, fundamentally, my painful and frightening idea of friendship conveys that there are very specific things one can do and say and be; anything outside of that will get you punished, ostracized, hurt. In my mind, friendship exists in this space where you are never okay. You are trapped. There is a script, and you must stick to it. Outside lies madness. There is no place, in my mind, for a friendship where it’s all okay, where the way you act and think and feel is okay. There is no place for a friendship where the boundaries you mutually create mean you are both free within them, rather than pent-up and surrounded.
And it’s no wonder that I’ve started thinking so hard about friends again. My mind is chirping up. It wants to talk about some stuff, deal with some stuff that I’m safe again to deal with. And I won’t let it talk. What it has to say is not okay with me. Of course I feel such an overwhelming need to find a human being to speak to; I’ve stopped speaking to myself. And then, I approach the process of speaking to another human being the way I approach myself: I need you, I need to talk to you, I need to share with you, but not these things. I can never share these things. These are the things I need to share, but no, we cannot speak of them. You will not like me. You will push me away. I know you will, because I do. And I do push these things away because I have iron-clad boundaries which I will not let go.
There is no third option, really, between having friends and having boundaries. But before I choose one or the other, I need to really be sure I know what my definitions mean. I think I know, on a fundamental level, what a friend is. I know it when I see it. I know it when I have it. That’s the “it just happens” part. I know it because I feel it. But I won’t feel it if I define boundaries as things that separate what is Me from what is Not Me. I won’t know if it my boundaries stop being things that keep me safe and start being things that keep me hidden, even from myself. If there is no place I can go to be okay, even within my own mind, I won’t find that comfort in another human being, either.
I’ve been gripping on so hard to some things while letting others go. Some of those things were necessities, at the time, even if in retrospect I can see better ways. I wasn’t living in retrospect then; that was the best I had. It was necessary for me to let go of my growth and self-development as a person when I lived with roommates who meddled with all my shit and treated my interests with a patronizing faux friendliness. It was necessary for me to let go of my need for clear and direct communication, and respect, and confrontation when I was in a workplace that would have emotional meltdowns at the drop of a goddamn hat. I don’t want to disparage emotional meltdowns – obviously I make some use of them – but when you’re afraid of making a misstep on a spreadsheet because it will trigger the Adult Child of Alcoholics issues of the person who writes your paychecks, that’s a little fucking confining. Within those necessities, my boundaries stopped being concepts that set up a play space for me, an area where I could spin and knock things over and sing real loud. They started being a concept that kept away the baddies, kept the other people from spinning into me, even if I had to stand at attention and not move a muscle; at the time, that was better than having to touch the people who were fucking with me.
Restrictive boundaries – boundaries that limited me instead of giving me space – were a coping mechanism for a time and a place I don’t inhabit anymore. I wasn’t able to recognize that when I left that time and place, because I’m not perfect, and while I have a lot of experience at dealing with abuse, I only have a little practice at escaping it. So, my brain did what I can always trust it to do. It kicked me in the fucking cervix. Oh, you won’t deal with this, huh? You’re just going to pretend you’re all better now? Well *BAM* how about a nervous breakdown, then? Or *DOOSH* maybe you want to have a panic attack? Oh, fine, DON’T pay attention to me. Well, if you’re so strong, maybe you should stop hitting yourself!
Now that I’m consciously trying to let go of my boundaries, I’m re-experiencing a sudden rush of memories about my past. Things I didn’t feel a need to talk about before. Things that had just seemed, you know, like redundant details. Sometimes, “I got abused,” seemed like enough to cover it. But right now, it isn’t. Right now, “I got abused in this way and then this place and then this time,” is what needs to happen. Contrary to what I made myself think, contrary to what might have happened a year ago in a bad job and bad home, immersing myself in those memories and talking about them out loud leads to relief. Leads to a palpable feeling of letting go. I’d thought they’d make me more upset, more angry, more afraid. I’d thought they’d make me feel lonely and pathetic. But instead it feels like I figured out a really hard math problem. Just *click* and Oh, so that’s why I feel this way. I get it now. I see where I came from, and, most importantly, I see where I am. Not where I should be or wanted to be, but where I am. It’s an even-keel kind of feeling. Where I am is okay. Who I am is okay. What I feel and think is okay. Even if it’s weird, or even if it’s frighteningly sad. Nothing that’s in me will overwhelm me, or change me. That stuff’s already in there, already a part of me. I’ve already been carrying it around. I just need to learn to listen to my mind and my body, when they’re telling me it’s time to shift the weight a little. Or when it’s time to share.
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So I’m in the middle of exams, which is why this comment is later than it would otherwise have been. And I really, really want to say this, because though you must know it, no one can hear it enough from other people: it would be an honour and a privilege to call you friend. And the only reason I can say that is because I’ve read your blog. And while I know that you have boundaries which the blog doesn’t cross, I’m also sure that I, across the Atlantic, know some pretty damn personal things about you, and I know the way that you express them, and that makes me admire you and respect you and want to know you better. So I guess the point is that people will like you for the things you’re scared about telling them.
And I’m 99.9% certain you’ll never take me up on this, but you have an email address for me, if you ever want to use it, and I’m honestly not just saying that because I don’t think you will. Even if you never do, I just wanted to write it down.
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I recently found your blog through a random link, and what you had to say and the story you have to tell caught my interest. It caught my interest, because we share a few things in common. By no means are our stories the same, or even close to identical. It’s just that there is a common ground. I am like you when it comes to the difficulty of making friends. Not the same, but similar.
You discussion about boundaries strikes many chords in me, because I get it. I too have a fear of being hurt. I too wish to maintain my safety net. I too have difficulty making friends.
However, I have been able to define what the word “friend” means to me. It is similar to a transaction, but not anywhere close to the same. Sometimes the balance is unequal, and that’s ok. I’ve learned that to be a good friend, you don’t keep tabs on who owes who what (unless there is a spoken agreement in place about favors or money). Conversely, someone is not a good friend for you if they regularly, and seriously make statements like “… but I did x for you.” Some things just can’t be measured in tit for tat.
What really makes a friend, in my opinion, is not what they give to you materially. It’s how they make you feel. If you had no fear for your physical security, would you miss them if they were no longer there? Some of the things that help me gauge that feeling is if I think of telling them about minor things that happen in my daily life, or if I see something in the store and want to get it for them because I know they’ll like it, not because I feel like I owe it to them. They’re people I want to see smiling. Who I wish genuine happiness for, and they for me.
Friends are people who care about you, and show it in their own way. Some people are not good at it, and some people are fantastic. The only way I’ve found to gauge how another person feels is if they treat you differently (in a good way) from strangers or general acquaintances.
I have no solutions for making friends, because I still have difficulty letting my guard down. My methods are somewhat simple. I start by listening. I look to see if we share any common ground, whether it’s a tv show, a hobby, or an opinion. I typically don’t talk to people until I have established some form of common ground, or understanding. When there is something for me to say, or a question I can ask, that’s when I start talking. It’s like probing. In my head I’m thinking “Are you a potential friend? How close of a friendship could we have? What other common grounds do we share? Should I ask this person out to coffee or lunch? When is it ok to hang out one on one instead of in large groups?”
Typically I feel the answers to those questions rather than think them. Also, the people I have managed to become close with (those are very few) tend to make a lot of first moves. It takes a very long time for me to get close with a person. I have to be very comfortable with them before I can start telling them about my inner thoughts. The people I call friends, are the people who hang on when I start pushing them away. They push back in a way. They ask what’s wrong, or they just stay by me until I’m ready to tell them. The one thing they have in common is that they refuse to leave, no matter how exasperating I get.
I guess the purpose of this comment is to share my experience with you, because I know what it’s like to not have a single person you feel able to share things with, and I hoped that some way, some how, my experiences might help you a little. You don’t have to let go of all your boundaries. You don’t have to let go of any at first. However, a big part of friendship is risk. The risk of rejection. The risk of getting on eachother’s nerves from time to time, and having to work to maintain the friendship, to come to a mutual understanding. The closer and more comfortable the friendship, the more risk is involved. Ultimately, a close friendship should be worth the risk, because both parties are willing to work with, understand, and forgive each other for their faults, because the person as a whole is worth knowing.
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For what it’s worth, I don’t do brilliantly at friends either (didn’t believe anyone really liked me at all until[1] about eight months ago, a year after I started university, among other things), but:
It was necessary for me to let go of my need for clear and direct communication, and respect, and confrontation when I was in a workplace that would have emotional meltdowns at the drop of a goddamn hat.
… specifically regarding “how do you know if you’re doing it right?” and the need for clear & direct communication in friendships: I do it by communicating clearly and directly. “Are you a huggy person? Are hugs welcome from me in general? I understand entirely if you say no. Would you like a hug from me in this specific instance? May I have a hug?” This works… astonishingly well. In the sense that I’m astonished by it.
I do badly at being confronted[2] but increasingly well at confronting; one of my favourite people is the bloke who say “Yes, thanks, I appreciate you pointing that out” when I say “Ah…” in response to his using e.g. “twat” as a perjorative.
So for what it’s worth, those boundaries are ones that can be maintained while also having friends.
Unfortunately this doesn’t help with the mechanics of acquiring them, and I’ve still no real idea how I managed that, but. Well. It can work with non-Internet people too.
[1] … and at this point in the sentence it *finally clicked* that that’s my father’s doing, as in a direct result of actual things he actually said. I knew he was emotionally abusive; I hadn’t joined those dots. Thanks.[3]
[2] I’m aware that this is my problem and am working on it!
[3] And indeed thank you so much for all of your writing. It is really, really helping me. And thank you for being frank and honest and for being the person who talks about fascinating things to do with gynaecology and so on. I would love to meet you.
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What you mean by ‘friend’ is relative as well. I am lucky enough to have found some people that I consider true friends in the last few years. Before that, I never felt like I had friends. I did, but they weren’t people I would let past the first circle of my boundaries, so I didn’t consider them to be. But they were what other people, people who need fewer boundaries, count as ‘friends’. People who would go to the mall with you, but would wonder what was wrong with you if you called them crying at midnight.
I’m not saying you need more superficial friends. I’m just saying, even ‘normal’ people don’t usually have many of that quality of friend. They are valuable and hard to find, and if you have one or two, you are doing well.
And I don’t necessarily think you have to throw your boundaries striaght out and jump into friendships. Friendships grow, and boundaries shift. And there might be some people you want to let past two or three but not all the way. That’s ok, I reckon. That’s an achievement.
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I keep trying to figure out what it is about your writing that I like so much. (And obviously you’re popular with a lot of other people, too.)
I think it is your values. You have a clarity and a seeking of truth that I really respect. I keep ending up feeling muddy myself because I keep thinking I need to dumb myself down (compromising my values) in order to participate in society, not that that has every really worked particularly well. And I come here and get a wee nudge to be clearer in my own boundaries and my own needs, not to be difficult, but only to avoid poisoning myself with other people’s reasonable compromises.
It’s hard to keep believing it’s better to avoid toxic people, including the benevolently toxic ones, but then I come here, and see how popular you are, and think maybe it works better, too.
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Reading this post with mounting horror, I am so sorry to have been a bother instead of a random internet brush-off in your legion of commenters. I tried hard not to be critical of you personally, but to examine a tangential general thought. I had no idea my comment would have any emotional effect at all and I can’t apologize enough. Sincerely, I’m sorry.
What I wanted to say from your previous two posts was that I thought you were looking for acquaintances, not friends (because a friend you CAN say all that stuff you are choking back, anything that pops into your head, really, as long as it isn’t abusive towards the friend). I was trying to say that you’re probably doing better than you think you are, because potential-acquaintance-person has no idea what was in your head that made the awkward laughter, or unpredictable reaction, or whatever impulse it is that ran up against a control mechanism. And the control mechanism is necessary! Isn’t it?
Now I’m thinking about this comment you made last month or whenever (can’t find it right now) about how you recognize when someone is safe to talk about rape with. It was so helpful to my own thought processes, and my new-found ability to recognize and name rape culture or anti-woman language. Since that’s something I’d then integrated into my own life, and I learned it directly from you, I guess I figured that it was how you always looked at the world as well. So I thought that the current discussion was not about how to recognize a potential friend (because you already know how to do that – see referenced comment that changed my life) but rather how to deal with the awkwardness of not knowing one way or the other about a new person.
I don’t know, because I obviously don’t know anything, but I’m guessing that you’re creating a false dichotomy when you say friends and boundaries can’t co-exist. It doesn’t make sense to analogize from Flint’s wanting to abuse and befriend, because boundaries do not equal abuse. Protecting yourself is completely different from abusing someone else, isn’t it?
It also has never occurred to me that shelving an issue (the way you did on the orange juice morning) was the same type of boundary that goes between oneself and the outside world. Repression (a necessary and good survival instinct, as you know from experience) isn’t at all the same as inter-personal protection, right? I can’t figure out how you can cut off one part of your brain and say that part is Not Me. I mean, if one part of your brain thinks up a rape joke somehow, there’s no way to cut yourself out of your life, is there?
So what definitions of “boundary” and “friend” *are* you working with here? In other words, are you trying to get rid of your boundaries, or are you figuring out which repression you’re going to examine to see if it’s still necessary?
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I’m just throwing this out there, but what if you had friends that represented boundaries that you’d like to keep?
I mean (and I’m sure this is coming out all wrong), what if your friends were people who respected you for who you were, what you’ve been through to become this person, and they’re people who wouldn’t try to hold you back on whatever path you were on in life. If they were the friend that kept you from drinking excessively when you go out to the bar because you get a really nasty hangover? Or the friend who is always able to go for coffee with you when you’re in the middle of a meltdown, even if that means getting up at 2AM?
I mean, there’s people out there like that, I have a couple of friends like that and believe me, I didn’t pick them up on eBay or anything.
But, I did say a couple. It really is only 3 or 4 people tops that are close to me like that. I have loads of “Facebook friends”, people I call friend and yet I don’t hear from them unless something major has happened to them or to me.
I absolutely do not think for one second that you need to tamper with your personal boundaries in order to have friendships. I haven’t and I refuse to, and I have friends who respect those boundaries, and I respect theirs.
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So much of what you wrote in this post mirrors what I have been struggling with and haven’t been able to find words for. Boundaries and barriers and what the fuck’s up with people whose so-called honesty is abusive? Thanks
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A friend of mine said to me recently it was only paranoia if there was really nothing wrong. And lately you’ve been writing about things like having the rug pulled out from under you, or if you’d have support, like the support you get from friends or family or where ever, if you crash or fall [which I think was in your last entry, or the one before, which I wanted to say something about but couldn't think of a suitable response]. Having a support system, having things you want, which would let you have more things you want.
None of that stuff really crosses your mind when shit’s not okay. Because as you said, you’re busy being strong, and dealing with everything not being okay. It’s more reactionary, that time period. Maintaining, or working towards something, however you look at improving things. And just speaking personally, with the wealth of thing not okay right now, things that just need dealt with, I know I’m not really looking forward, which makes what you say kind of ominous. Boundaries, and support, and other things to make it all stable, which you work hard to set up when you’re being strong, to get everything to where you want it to be, and then… toss it all out and redefine everything, because all your stability was for functioning in a place and time that was harder in a different way.
I do wonder if what you’re talking about is the same for everyone. Even looking back to the happy stuff still feels like sticking my finger into an open wound. If there’s a place beyond that where it’s not the case, that would be wild.
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I’m going to apologize in advance for not being particularly articulate here. I should probably gather my thoughts better before posting, but now is when I have the time to post so it’s just going to be word vomit. I’ve been through some pretty rough times in my life; suffice it to say I was always the one whose personal narratives didn’t fit the mold, the one whose story made people get quiet and uncomfortable and at a loss as to what to say. I think I recognize what you’re going through (I’m quite a bit older, so I’ve gotten through the worst of it and am now in a pretty good place).
First off, I was so glad to finally get to the words “coping mechanism” in your post. It seems to me that what you’re dealing with is the discomfort and vulnerability of shedding coping mechanisms that you’ve needed and used for just about your whole life, coping mechanisms that feel like an integral and necessary part of who you are. It feels dangerous, like taking a blind step and hoping you’re not at the edge of a cliff. Yet, there is also a level of frustration and an anger that gets turned inward, because the circumstances that required you to develop those mechanisms have passed, yet the mechanisms remain in control. I remember feeling like once my life got to be normal, and stayed that way for a considerable period of time, I should feel normal, too. Those are the, “oh come on now, just get over it already” thoughts we berate ourselves with. Unfortunately, as you know, it’s not that simple or speedy. The things you suffered through are immense, and while not insurmountable, they have deeply colored your life and it takes a long time for that color to start to fade. The freak-outs, the ruminating, the anger, the frustration – it’s all a normal part of the process. You are not a freak, Harriet. The feelings and thoughts you are having are a perfectly normal part of your healing process.
That’s the thing no one really tells you: Healing hurts.
I believe this is so because to survive things like you’ve been through, you had to numb yourself in so many ways. You had to be a rock. You were also made to think that the abuse, the mistrust, the insecurity, the fair weather economic transaction friends were all a normal part of life. Realizing that it’s not normal, leaving, and creating your mile high-and-deep impenetrable boundaries to keep those toxic people away from you was a necessary step to save yourself and stop the immediate bloodshed. Once you’ve rejuvenated yourself a little, the deep healing process can begin. Part of that is taking stock of your life and connecting all those dots, as you said. The unavoidable consequence of doing that is that all of those feelings – the horror, the shame, the anger, the frustration – hit you. Sometimes they subside to allow you to enjoy the very real good things you have going on right now in your life. And sometimes you need to actively push them away for awhile to come up for air. But to continue healing, you have to feel them and let them out, and you have to do that at a pace that you can live with. If you let everything wash over you at once, you run the risk of drowning in the deluge. You’re too well-practiced a survivor for that! This takes a lot of time.
The friend thing will come. That’s part of the healing process, too, and I suspect that you’ll one day get to a point where you no longer feel like you have to choose between boundaries and friends. It’s not a binary, it just feels like one right now at this point in your life. And that’s OK. That’s normal, I think, given the betrayals and absence of true friendship that characterized your previous “friendships.” This may be extrapolating too much from my own experience, but one other thing I’d say is that, given everything you’ve been through, you may not have that “it just feels right” feeling right away. The first time you reach out for true friendship may actually feel like a frightening leap of faith, and only you can know when (and with whom) you’re ready to take it.
By way of anecdote, that leap of faith happened for me in my second year of college. It was when a “friend” became a friend. We’d driven home together (7 hours) for Thanksgiving, and the whole way I was in semi-panic attack mode. My “friend” knew some of the empirical circumstances of my life, but I was pretty good by that point in relaying them without a lot of emotion attached. I was strong, dammit! I was “normal!” But I was having a hard time not being emotional on this trip. At one point, I ended up at her house. We were talking in her room, and I had a break down. I remember sitting there shaking and sobbing, and shamefully confessing that I didn’t believe anything would get better for me because I didn’t believe that I deserved happiness. She wept with me and told me all of the reasons why I did. She didn’t judge me, or expect me to magically get better now that my secret was out. She was my rock for many years to come, and still is when I need one. I think that release, which came four years into our “friendship,” was the true start of our friendship and my healing process – a process that continues to this day. That first leap was scary as all hell, and god knows as soon as those words left my mouth I wanted a hole to open up and swallow me, I was so ashamed and humiliated. But I survived, and my friend let me push her away enough for me to feel safe, but not enough so that I would drown. And that experience made it easier to open up to more people, and eventually I did learn to recognize that “I just know” feeling. I still don’t have a lot of friends, but the ones I have are true. They don’t make me sacrifice my boundaries for the sake of our friendship, because part of true friendship is respect. The people who love you will respect your boundaries, and once you see that this is true, you eventually start to feel safe without having to erect so many.
You’ll get there, Harriet, I’m sure of that. You’re healing.
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: No need to apologize for your comment. It bothered me, but it wasn’t the “That person is WRONG” botherment, so much as the “That person said something I don’t want to think about and it annoys me. Shit. I guess I have to think about it.”
I didn’t consider what happened during the orange-juice morning to be repression so much as priorities. I decided that I don’t have to figure everything out right now, right away. At that time, I was also still not-dealing with my rape. I was aware that I had been raped, and I knew that I was going to have to deal with it. But it was a big thing, so I gave myself permission to put it on the back burner while I worked on some things that were more immediate, and while I waited for a time where I felt I had more support and safety to deal. Repression, to me, is pretending that things don’t exist, that they will go away, that I will never have to think about them. What I chose to do was re-prioritize what I did and did not have to deal with at any given moment. I knew I would have to deal with it, I knew it was there, but I decided there were more important things at that moment in time. That, to me, is also a boundary — I allowed myself to make a decision about what I did and did not have the resources to cope with, and didn’t hound after myself, trying to make myself feel bad for not fixing everything all at once. I gave myself permission to not have all the solutions.
I don’t know if the decision between boundaries and friendship really exists, either, but it’s where I’m choosing to start thinking about this, because those are two of the biggest issues in my life, and they conflict so regularly that there’s obviously a problem there. I used the analogy with Flint because he thought he had a decision between honesty and friendship, but when you investigated his definition of both, you’d discover that he really wasn’t talking about honesty or friendship — his definition of honesty was abuse, and his definition of friendship was people who enjoyed being abused. Turns out, those things were mostly incompatible — he could find people willing to put up with some degree of abuse, but nobody who was willing to enjoy it and not fight back ever.
I was thinking I have to make a choice between boundaries and friendship, but maybe before I accept that as a fundamental truth, I need to investigate what I mean by boundaries and friendship. It may turn out I’m not talking about boundaries or friendship at all, or that my definitions are outdated and were formed during an abusive past that doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe my definition of boundaries more closely resembles isolation and lack of risk at this point, rather than healthy, self-aware compromise. And I know for sure that my definition of friendship more closely resembles survival and necessity than anything happy. So, yeah, if you take my current definitions of boundaries and friendship, they can’t co-exist. But maybe if I more closely examine what I mean — or what I want to mean — when I use those words, they can.
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: I don’t think I need to tamper with my personal boundaries either. But I do think I need to periodically re-evaluate whether my boundaries are healthy or working for me, and I think I’ve let that slip over the last few years. I kind of chose one model of boundaries and decided, “Okay, this is it, forever.” Now I’m realizing that I need something more nuanced and active than that.
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(((Harriet J.)))
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Long bike rides are amazingly cathartic. I discovered this weird brain-clearing would happen to me too. I’m different though – I was like, sadness? embarrassment? woot! bring it on! …cause I’m all about feeling pain, again and again. Abuse survivor masochistic tendencies for the win! =P
And then, once I was mulling as I rode (8 miles each way to work), I felt so free! It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and I liked that, to my surprise.
I like to use exercise to clear my head – I’m not sure what it is about it that works like nothing else.
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So your posts on friendship made me think about how I used to think about friends and how I think about all my human interactions now. I think that we tend to dismiss the joy of casual, or kind-of-single-purpose friends.
I have one very good friend from high school. She rescued me, and I rescued her, and we have been friends and allies ever since, and boy do I know how incredibly lucky and blessed I am to have her in my life. However, it took me forever to see the value in “talking about the weather” with people.
It seems to me that there is value in spending a moment with someone at the cash register commenting on the rain, or the dry spell, or whatever. Sometimes that trivial interaction just irrationally brightens my day. I also ride horses, and my barn friends really have no idea about stuff I’ve gone through in the past, or even much about what’s going on in my personal life. We just talk about our horses. Yep, sometimes we share a few personal stories and get a little close, but really, it’s mostly about the horses.
I also have a set of friends from work and we talk about TV shows, and kids, but not really in-depth, just casually, and you know what, it’s OK. It’s OK that they don’t know that I have been in despair, that I was hurt so much by stuff that happened in elementary and high school.
It took me a long time to get to the point where I like this for the small but valuable thing that it is. I don’t want to be cynical anymore about basic daily human interactions. I just want to let them happen and keep it light, because keeping it light somehow means I’m healed enough. I have several acquaintances who make fun of this kind of interaction and they are such incredibly negative people overall that I really keep them at arms length. They really can’t accept a pleasant interaction at simple face value.
I also have come to be more accepting of friends/acquaintances that come and go. Life is fleeting, and we can make the most of it, but there are so many people in the world that it’s impossible to stay deeply connected to everyone all the time (nor would we really want to) so sometimes I let people go to swim in other waters and see who else I will meet in the stream.
I still have issues around friendship, though. I wish I had some more close friends to just do things with and know that they aren’t going to go off on horrible tangents that trigger me, so this year I’m taking a very close look at the people I know and trying to do something to actively cultivate the people that I really feel compatible with. It’s really, really hard. I think I’m still dysfunctional about connecting with people because I am seriously introverted and I can get overloaded with input pretty easily, but having functional friendships that are about doing things I think is finally within my reach.
You made me think about this deep and hard all over again, and so thank you.
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>> There is no third option, really, between having friends and having boundaries.
I don’t so much agree with this one. But again, perhaps the definition of the word “boundary” is the problem here.
A friend of mine was dealing with a related sort of problem a couple of years ago. She wanted to be available for her friends, but couldn’t cope with some of the emotional stuff that sometimes brought up. So, she tried thinking of her boundaries in differents ways. First the boundary was like a wall, but that kept out a lot of good things she wanted. Then later, the boundary became like a net, letting the things she wanted in (like companionship and ability to empathize for her friends), but keeping the things she wanted out (like soulsucking drama). The way this works in practice, I think, is that you don’t necessarily think about a boundary as all or nothing. Let me give an example: I’m close with my best friend, my Mom, and my sister. But if I want to talk about stuff relating to sex, I’ll probably bring it up with my best friend, maybe with my sister, and probably not with my Mom. I’m close with all of them, but I don’t necessarily do the same things with all of them.
The other thing about boundaries is that for me, the tricky bit is (a) figuring out what you’re comfy with when it’s sort of a moving target, and (b) figuring out how to firmly but not meanly communicate where the boundary is to the people around you. For me, boundaries are about my interactions with other people, not whether or not I’ll have interactions at all.
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I think that there is another potential dimension to your friends v. boundaries question: When you feel like your boundaries are weak, you have to man the wall all the time and look at everyone as a possible intruder. But it is possible to interact with some people without them getting near your boundaries, either because they are thoughtful or because they just don’t see that area.
I’ve been thinking about this like my dog (I hope this analogy is okay), he likes to eat things out of the trash can, so I have to enforce the “Don’t eat out of the trash can” rule every time I see him sneaking that way, but he doesn’t give a crap about the cat, so I never have to enforce the, “Don’t kill the cat” rule. He would never think to approach that boundary. The “Don’t kill the cat” rule doesn’t go away, it’s still there, but I have learned that I don’t have to spend energy maintaining constant vigilance there with this individual dog.
People are the same way, some of them brush against your boundaries and sometimes you have to get rid of them for it, but some people just don’t and those people are going to be the most comfortable to be around.
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I think one of the most important boundaries you’ve managed to self-cross is this blog. You’ve come out and told a bunch of strangers on the internet what you’ve been through, how you have worked through it so far, and how you’ve continued to integrate your experience with life in a manner that allows you to function up to your own level of capability.
(That being said, I understand that none of us would know each other if we tripped over the other in the street, and being “Harriet J” makes it a lot easier to go ahead and lay it all out on the line about your past and even your future.)
The question is, what boundaries are you willing to soften, or even let go of completely in real life (because this is the internet, and these questions don’t apply here) in order to obtain the types of friendships you’re looking for? You talk so candidly about what you’ve gone through, do you think you could have the same level of openness over time with someone? Over coffee or drinks? Would you bring it up or just wait and see if the topic ever arose?
Would you ever want the other person to dwell on it?
For example, my fiance told me when we first started dating that he had gotten his high school girlfriend pregnant, twice. The first time, she miscarried, the second time she’d had an abortion. Now, he was terrified that he had told me. In fact, his exact words were “I got my ex pregnant twice, it was in high school. *pause* I can’t believe I told you that, that was in the vault!”. Word-for-word.
I know he was worried about what my reaction would be, and being a woman of the Early Millennium I looked him square in the eye and said “I’m sorry to hear that. How did it work out in the end?”
And he took a long, deep breath, because whatever he had thought that I would think of him for it having happened didn’t manifest, and over time he grew to realize that it wasn’t going to. I wasn’t going to hate him for so many little reasons, they were only teenagers, neither of them were lesser people because it happened, she had a miscarriage and then an abortion; both had nothing to do with him because it’s her body and her choice. The list goes on from there. I think he felt extremely guilty though, he later admitted it was because when she was pregnant the first time, he was scared, but decided he’d be a man and own up to the baby. When he found out she’d miscarried, he felt a bit of relief but tried to not admit it to himself. Then, when she got pregnant again, he was excited. He felt this time that his guilt from the loss of the last baby would be absolved because he could put his heart and soul into this child.
He said “When I found out she’d had an abortion, I was crushed. I was READY. I was going to quit school, and get a job, and raise this kid and make her my wife… and then she gave it up like that….I honestly felt I was being punished for being relieved about the miscarriage.”
I had to explain to him that he wasn’t being punished, miscarriages can’t be prevented and an abortion is a woman’s choice regardless of what the man in the relationship thinks. I also reminded him that she probably still hurts as badly as he does because a miscarriage is hard to deal with, and an abortion is a hard thing to face.
I won’t lie and say I didn’t dwell on it though. Hard not to when you hear those words from a person you love, and even harder to not ask questions. There are times where I’ve peppered him for info, and he’s told me honestly, and other times where I’ve been told to fuck off. I’ve since realized though, that the thing he keeps with him from that admission is that I don’t see him as this unfortunate human being because of it all. It’s not a dark stain on him as a person, and I think now he’s healing.
Not everyone is so lucky, but I hope you are.
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I left my abusive boyfriend in 2008 because I was pregnant and couldn’t see raising a child with him.
He was also a pothead, and the ‘friendships’ you describe for Flint are exactly like his. He felt this need to have people around him approve of and agree with him, but he couldn’t make himself act in ways that would allow them to. So he ended up being someone they hung out with when they wanted to get stoned, but didn’t actually like. It got so bad that at one point he was telling his friends that he would loan ME to them, but I was fortunate in that I’d had it very good in my life before and wasn’t about to take that from anyone.
I have the greatest love and respect for you, Harriet, because in you I see what could have happened to me, had I not had the support system I needed when I left Albert. You remind me every day how fortunate I was to walk out of that relationship with only the minimal damage and scars that I have.
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I, too, am not sure about boundaries and friendship being incompatible; but I do believe that if you find that your current boudnaries and your current understanding of friendship are incompatible, then it may be a good idea to examine how you think about them. I rather look forward to seeing you do that with the admirable clarity and insight you possess. Let me say that after years of training in thinking and writing clearly, I am not yet up to your level.
One reason I think boundaries and friends are compatible is because I have both. My boundaries are well-defined, clear, and mined with claymores, more or less. Step over them without permission and explosions follow. On the other hand, I am also blessed with a surprising number of incredible friends, whose love and loyalty is a constant source of confused joy to me. No idea how this really works. When you find out I hope you’ll tell us.
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: The dog thing! Okay, yes, that cleared something up for me! When I’m thinking about friends and boundaries, I’m imagining people who will consistently attempt to cross really serious boundaries, and I’m imagining all the time and energy I’m going to have to put into explaining to them, “No, no, don’t do this, it gives me panic attacks and I can’t trust you and let me explain to you about my rape again,” and it exhausts and depresses me to think about having to do that.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I could make friends who might occasionally and accidentally cross less-important boundaries, and we can have a talk about silly miscommunications, instead of a talk about rape and evil and abuse, which is somewhat less fucking exhausting. That is one way my perceptions and definitions are off, and it makes more sense now why I’ve been so reticient to make friends and/or lower boundaries: in my experience, it’s always the “kill cat” boundaries I’m negotiating instead of the “eating the garbage” boundaries.
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I just this little comic today, and it instantly made me think of your comment regarding Flint and his “honesty”:
http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=564
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I’m glad to have helped a bit.
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Struggling with boundary issues myself these days (off and on, depending on whether I’m in a good patch or on rough ground) so this post resonated with me…Harriet, you have a gift for being able to express very real but hard-to-pin-down emotional/social/psychological issues so eloquently and personally, yet still in a way that makes it so open to include the experiences of others.
Instead of the bible or mantras, I pick out quotes as my “scriptures,” and this one I have been keeping near me recently. Like your writing, it names the pain but includes the hope.
“We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadness of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this–through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication–we build those walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, but yet low enough, and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination toward brackishness…
…but love is to me, the ultimately more extraordinary part of the breakwater wall: it helps to shut out the terror and awfulness, while, at the same time, allowing in life and beauty and vitality…love as sustainer, as renewer, and as protector. After each seeming death within my mind or heart, love has returned to recreate hope and to restore life. It has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest. It has, inexplicably and savingly, provided not only cloak but lantern for the darker seasons and grimmer weather.”
-Kay Redfield Jamison
An Unquiet Mind
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i think (for me, at least) that friendships are all about being able to say the hard things. and sometimes, it is so difficult to be able to open up and be vulnerable enough to trust someone else with what we have to say. but i also think it’s the most important part.
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