This is a rhetorical question. I know that it may sound whiny and entitled, but that is honestly not how I feel. I just want to know when things turn around a little. Sometimes it feels like I spend my entire life making excuses for other people, bending over backwards to make it okay for them. And then I find out that they didn’t really appreciate it anyway. It dawns on me that I am doing things that I don’t have to do. Sometimes people don’t do what they say they are going to to do when they say they are going to do it to test you and see where your REAL boundaries are. And sometimes people really just don’t understand what kind of chaos they are creating for you – they’re not testing your boundaries, trying to see how much you are willing to let them get away with, or anything else. They just really don’t have a clue. There is no malice intended; they just don’t get it.
As I think about it some more, it dawns on me that this is really an issue of boundaries – MY boundaries. Do I have some or not? If I am going to set them, then it is important for me to maintain them. Other people don’t know where my boundaries are until I tell them. And if I don’t hold them, they have every right to believe that it wasn’t my actual boundary anyway. After all, if it were, wouldn’t I have held it?
In my old age I am finally seeing that it is not a bad thing to either have a boundary or to enforce one. As I look back to previous experiences, I see that any issues I have had usually come down to either not having or not enforcing a boundary. I am making a decision today that in the future I will hold my boundaries. You don’t have to like them, or me for that matter. But you do have to respect my boundaries. And while I will give myself the grace of knowing that I will probably not be able to hold my boundaries 100% of the time when I start, my plan is to get to the point where I can and I will and I do. This feels like self-care to me.
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