Boundary Waters

The day job was slightly terrifying today for a minute, when 6 new SRs came in, including several with 13 subcompoents. But I got to dispatch 5 of them and the remaining one is basically done already. So things are okay. The bug one is still happening but I got through all the requests about it so it’s getting better. Got through the release stuff for this week and I’m off the queue next week. Still holding some SRs but I should be able to burn them down in a couple of days next week.

I learned long ago how to make myself do a thing, even when it seems unpleasant. I made a ton of survival decisions where it was just not plausible to care about how I felt – I needed to do things whether I was well or ill, nervous or calm, hungry or full. I needed to do them whether I liked it or not. And given that, there’s no need to even consider how I feel about it, because it won’t change my plan. This is great for survival, but terrible for being a content human.

It’s always a bad plan to ignore how you feel and power through anyway. Sometimes there will be a reason to ignore your feelings for a minute or an hour. Maybe even a day if things are really bad. But it has to end quickly. Not knowing how you feel, and not adjusting for it, makes things worse. It makes easy things hard and it makes hard things dangerous. It trades your success at a task for your overall wellbeing.

So I don’t want to make myself do things, not in normal life. I want to find a way to like them, so that paying attention to how I feel makes it eaiser to do them, not harder. And so I can stop, or at least pause, if that is ever a better choice than continuing.

4-year-old me knows from experience that feeling like I want a boundary is a reliable predictor of me being hurt. I will either be hurt by not enforcing a boundary I need, or I will be punished for trying to create a boundary. Mother didn’t want me to have boundaries and told me I was selfish and hurtful for even wanting them. Like all narcs she had hers – variable though they were – and strictly enforced them. But mine were an attack to her, and my desire for them a clear sign that I didn’t deserve them. That I needed to be more considerate of hers, like the one that demands I don’t get boundaries.

This is the same situation we imagine women being put into, where they are expected to “be nice” even to their own detriment. Where they might fear retribution if they try to assert a boundary. Where we shame them for wanting one at all. Except my harrasser wasn’t a rando or even my boss, she was my unsupervised jailer.

So when I try to draw a boundary for you – to even let you know that I need one – my first feeling is shame. I expect you will be disgusted ¹For most of my life I imagined that being vulnerable would make people disgusted with me. It often did, and not just with Mother – when your life is disgusting people often react poorly to it. So I never expected a compassionate response. Which made life hard and sharing even harder, but also made being open trivial once I decided to make … Continue reading with me when you see how I’m vulnerable. I know that I can avoid punishment by leaving, so I’m not afraid of that anymore, but I’m still afraid that me even wanting a boundary is hurtful and selfish. It doesn’t matter that I rationally believe the action will improve both our lives. It doesn’t matter that I’ve done it before and liked how it turned out. My flashback feels remain convinced that me wanting a boundary is unjust.

But for survival reasons I needed to create boundaries. So I learned how to make myself do it. Even knowing it was selfish and hurtful and unjust. Even knowing I would feel like a terrible person. I decided to do it, even though I could not like it. And over time I learned to not consider how I felt about it, since I expected to feel really bad.

I need to consider how I feel, so I can make accommodations. I’m so focused on avoiding the shame that I won’t think about how the process might be better. It keeps me from getting help – from venting about my feelings or getting reassurance about my fear of hurting people. It keeps me from being compassionate with myself about how the process is hard. It keeps me from imaging a story I like better. Enforcing boundaries is hard even under good conditions, and I will continue to not like all the parts of it, but I can make some parts better. Incremental improvement.

I am still feeling a little resentful about the space between what I expected and what I needed. I’m feeling less dumb about it though, less like I could have avoided the pain by being less demanding. The resentment is decades old – it comes from my childhood – not a thing I invented today. I wasn’t wrong about what I have or what I need, I’m just disappointed to not be getting what I need and hoped for. And that’s totally normal, not evidence of shameful selfish desire. It hurts, but not because I’m doing something bad.

And I’m feeling much more sad than resentful now. Sad that I didn’t get what I needed decades ago. Sad that I might have to give up something I really want to get it now. Sad that this situation exists and requires some pain to get out of. I’m also hopefully because its getting easier to believe that I can have what I need and what I want. Easier to believe that I’m allowed to try at least, instead of just hoping.

C came over today and did robots for a few hours. We got through all of the homework that was available – not quite all for the course but everything we could work on. And we talked about a design for his final project, which I think will be pretty cool, at least within the scope of this shitty robot kit. They also helped me move my bike down to the garage, in preparation for painting and bed installation. And we talked for a while afterward, now that we finally got to meet at a reasonable hour, which was nice. I still have trouble with the way they think I’m smart. But there were normal unplanned low stakes parts that went fine. And they didn’t melt when they heard about my day, which is encouraging.

Talked with DerbyK a bit. Vented about my mixed feels and tried to find ways to pull them together. Succeeded with some, like framing the issue as split to match my feelings, rather than just assuming the hard parts were my fault, and that I had to want less to be kind. Got enough response to feel heard. And learned some new facts about you.

Talked with Shanda about your response to work, about frozen bread, and about how you felt restless from your injury. For a while you were sure that Dog was being neglected but eventually discovered it was yourself. It’s a good reason for you to have a dog – it’s sometimes much easier for you to assign feelings to a dog than to notice your own directly. Today it prompted you to exercise on the new downstairs bike, and that was good for everyone. We talked about the shape of the support I need, to help me feel entitled to engagement and to believe it is possible – not certain but possible – for me to have what I want without giving up all of myself. That I can figure out hoe to get it and won’t have to hurt people to make it happen.

M shouted back at me last night. Helped me see my worst fears isn’t true. At least not in the way I imagine. I’m still nervous about trying to make things go, but it doesn’t seem quite so dangerous to try. Doesn’t seem quite to likely to fail. Doesn’t seem quite so high stakes. It was a thing I needed and I appreciate you doing it. I’m still nervous about next steps, but I’m hopeful it will go. I’ve seen you do it before, and I have ideas to make it eaiser for both of us.

I thought about building a router again today. I’m gonna try to make picking hardware for that a priority, once the paint and bed are installed. I am not really worried about the software or config parts anymore – these days my network is complicated but well documented and segmented. But I still don’t have any idea what hardware I want. And I could, with some research. So that’s on my list.

I have been thinking of feels for next week’s LI. Obviously there’s an opportunity to talk about how I imagine boundaries as unidirectional – as a thing you can and should put on me but that I can’t put on anyone else. As a thing I am not entitled to want, let alone enforce. Maybe that feel goes with the narc suicide experiments – I’ll chew on it. I’ve also refined a question about how normal people learn to feel safe being cared for, since that was a barrier the last time around. Often LI works by connecting the safety that current you has to a past trauma, but that assumes you have current safety, which I do not. So I need a different tool for that bit.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.