Boundaries. in Mental Health

I think I never learned what boundaries were in the terms of which I think of them now, as an adult. The concept of personal boundaries is fairly new to me, actually. Like, maybe in the last year or even just in the last 8 months. Setting boundaries is incredibly difficult, I think, because it feels like placing demands on someone. And that is not how I was programmed.

I learned at a very young age that, even if I deserved to have boundaries, they wouldn’t be respected, anyway. I couldn’t enforce them. A child with parents who view children as belongings, annoyances, things to be seen and not heard, does not learn easily about boundaries or much of anything, really. No concepts of self-worth or self-love (if you are not worth loving by the people who brought you into the world, you certainly are not worth your own love), nothing at all about bodily autonomy. No, children are things, you see, to do with as you see fit. Little house elves to do the chores and smack around when you’ve had a bad day at work or a migraine coming on. Otherwise, they should be put away somewhere to sit silently and as unbothersome as possible.

(deep breath)

I recognize that none of the things I was programmed to believe or be are even remotely valid or realistic. But the programming, the code, it’s still in there, pushing back over every bit of new code that is trying to overwrite it. It’s like a virus, it has wormed its way into every bit of the system, and sometimes I worry that I’m not strong enough to fight it. Sometimes it just seems too hard. Sometimes it seems so hard that I think to myself, “If I wasn’t alive anymore, this would all just cease to be.” Like, I just wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore, wouldn’t have to try to process it or change it or… (no, I am not suicidal, I am in a deep depression but I have no desire to harm myself)

I’m just so tired. Tired of the things that don’t kill you but are supposed to make you stronger. I’m strong enough, goddammit. I don’t want to get stronger. I want to be done. I want to lie down and have a fucking nap from life. I think if I could have the entire first… I don’t know… 19 years of my life, just erased… I think I would do that. (I would never want to erase you, love, never, ever, but…) I think I would just format that fucking hard drive, wipe it clean, erase all the pain and the wrong lessons and the abuse and… all of it.

But that wouldn’t be enough. No, if I really wanted to erase all of the bullshit, all of the pain and abuse and just goddamn bullshit, I’d have to erase 41 years of my life. Like, 41 years and some months. To erase all of the bad code would be so much easier than this overwriting it shit. Because it’s so embedded and I feel like I’ll never get it all and then I’ll never really be good enough…

… for you.

And there’s that old code again, eh? Still telling me that I have to be something else to be good enough. What I am is not good enough, no matter what I’ve been through, how much I’ve overcome, nope, not good enough.

And it has no fucking thing at all to do with being good enough for someone else and I really hope you recognize that. It only has to do with feeling good enough for myself, and that’s just damn impossible. I’ll never be good enough for my own standards because those are programmed, too. And round and round we go. (sigh)

I don’t know how to make someone who doesn’t experience the things I do understand, and it wouldn’t even matter if I could. All it does, the only affect is has on the people around me, is to cause pain, sadness, a feeling of helplessness. I know this because I have been with enough depressed people in my life, I have been on both sides of it. Even knowing within myself that there was really nothing anyone could do to help me, I would still struggle and berate myself and feel helpless over not being able to help them. Like… I refuse to give myself understanding. I refuse to be compassionate and kind and patient with myself. I’m harsh and demanding and I absolutely berate myself mentally when I feel unhelpful or ineffective, when I don’t have any words that feel like the right words, when I know goddamn well where a person is and that, when I’m in that same place myself, there is nothing that I can say or do that will pull them out of it.

I’ve gotten better at helping others, at knowing what a person needs when they’re in a place in their own head that they maybe can’t get out of. Sometimes those people (and me, it’s me, I’m those people, too) just need love. A hug, a snuggle, a small token or gesture, a little note to say, “Hey, thinking about you, love you, hope you are well.” Because sometimes, that’s all I need. The smallest act can have the largest impact. Hearing, “I love you.” Seeing a smiling selfie face. Someone asking, and genuinely caring about the answer, how I’m coping with things. Feeling loved and actually being loved (because there is a difference, you know) go a very long way during a depressive episode.

Anyway, this ramble started out with boundaries. That’s the title, after all. I should probably stop derailing my fucking self.

I am only now learning about how to set boundaries. I am still not super great at speaking up all of the time, or when I feel I should. I generally just tend to… disappear. I mean, let us hearken back to my sexual assault this past summer. I never actually firmly and blatantly shut him down. Yes, yes, I was afraid and just wanted to get away before something really awful happened and so I was just trying to keep everything as calm as possible and because I didn’t have my knife on me, which was probably a very good thing, because I didn’t think I’d need it and so… (deep breath) Speaking up forcefully was not a thing that I did. Ever. Several people told me I should tell him how much he fucked up and I just could not. He texted me a couple of times after that and I just never responded and I guess he figured it out because he never texted me again. I suppose my silence spoke loudly enough to establish the boundary, but that is not a safe assumption to make. He knows where I work, where I live, and most of the people I know… By not speaking up loudly and forcefully at the time, I left a door open and I can almost guarantee he’ll walk right back through it some day as if, la dee dah, nothing ever happened. I never spoke up. I never clearly conveyed my boundary to him. Just total radio silence.

All of this because there is still that block in me, that wall, that face I have to put on so no one around me is uncomfortable even when I’m dying inside from discomfort and anxiety. I am constantly (still, my god, even still) worried about stepping on someone’s toes. Hurting feelings. Making someone uncomfortable. I still feel like it’s making unfair demands but, goddammit, to not make them is unfair to me, isn’t it? Why, why, why do I still live to throw myself under the bus? To throw myself in front of bullets for people who wouldn’t even think to do the same for me?

And I’m realizing that this is carrying over, this inability to verbally and firmly establish my own boundaries, to every aspect of my life, every relationship. I constantly find myself in this complete ball of frustration, frozen, immobile, mute, willing my mouth to move, willing the words to come out, and just… nothing. I can’t. It won’t work. I can’t make the words come because they feel like barbs, like little daggers for some reason. Like saying, “Hey, this is what I need,” is somehow hurtful to someone else and so I shouldn’t ask for it, I should just keep all the hurt to myself, deny myself what I need… again… for the comfort of others.

And also, the fear. There is big fear around this. Because one major thing I’ve discovered about setting boundaries with people is that people who don’t want to respect my boundaries will just walk away. Like, I’m worried about my boundaries… I don’t know, lessening me in someone’s eyes? Or someone taking something personally, because that has been a huge theme in my life. Nearly every time in my life that I’ve attempted to set boundaries with someone by saying, “Hey, it hurts me when you do this, please don’t do it anymore,” they have turned it around on me like I’m the bad guy. Again, there is the lesson that I am not worthy of boundaries and I can’t enforce them, anyway. And so there is a gut reaction in me that says, “No, don’t, don’t express that out loud, it will only come back to hurt you in the end.” It says that, if I don’t maintain exactly what is currently, I will lose it.

I have been feeling my way around some new boundaries lately, boundaries I think I might like to set. But expressing them verbally is still a huge challenge to me. Everything feels… precarious. I don’t know why. Probably because I’ve never had any good in my goddamn life and so there’s just no way this can last, like it’s a feather and the slightest puff of wind will blow it away.

And that’s not rational thinking, is it? Because these things in my life, they are far heavier and more sturdy than a feather. They can withstand, can’t they?

Last updated December 23, 2019