My fridge looks like it belongs to a mother.  Calendar with places to go and things to remember.  Magnets proclaiming the absurdity of life and my amazingness in dealing with the daily grind.  Stuff I don’t want to forget but have forgotten is up there.  Pictures made by my daughter in crayon, ink, and a medium about which I’m afraid to ask.

I love things that brighten up walls and make my surroundings more artsy.  My problem is I have few of them.  Walls, that is.

I’d like you to meet INCREDIBLY BAD BOUNDARY-GIRL.  That would probably be one of my top five choices for embarrassing superhero names to describe myself.  I’m horrible at setting walls.  Call in my Pisces-Moon idealism coupled with my Aquarian Sun can’t-everyone-get-along-for-humanity’s-sake activism, with a liberal dash of Swarovski Crystal-studded Leo Rising so it looks choreographed down to the ball-step-change.  I just want my life to be one big happy family.

That’s your cue to laugh.  Go on, now.  It really is funny (and I can’t hear you via internet anyway).

So, it took a while to figure out that the only place I’ve ever seen Happy Family was a Chinese take-out menu.  I used to get pretty upset when I lost friendships until I realized that I helped that process along by being suuuuuch an accomodating pushover.

If you’re a people pleaser, the day that you realize that job description sucks and you try to muscle your way out of it is going to be a bad day.  Just take it from me.  Stand up for yourself in any way and it’s like you grew horns, turned green and started speaking Swahili.  You “fell out” of your role.  You broke the give-and-take system (your job was “give” in case you missed it).  Oh, it’s bad.

And it’s a good deal my fault each time it happened.  In the new blush of friendships, we do everything we can to show we care, to be warm and likeable.  We bite our tongues more than usual, give way more than usual, and tend to put on our very best face.  For recovering people-pleasers, we go especially all out to show how great we are.  And it sets up a false expectation in our new friend/lover that is sure to crash in on their head like a burning roof down the line.

I’m learning a great deal about boundaries lately.  About setting limits for friends and other people in my life.  It feels strange to say “You can only be this close to me and no closer until I say it’s ok”.  I’m used to swinging the door to my heart wide and inviting the whole block in for a party.  No wonder I’m left cleaning emotional house long after my newest guests (ex-friends) have left.  I didn’t bother doing my own due diligence and being careful about people coming and going in my life.

Walls and boundaries… these used to be words at which I would shake my head with scorn.  But there is not a single thing in life that does not have a boundary.  Star systems, planets, continents, states, cities, blocks, buildings, rooms, people, organs, individual cells, atoms, nuclei.  All have boundaries.  All have walls.  Healthy walls that preserve what is contained within.

Walls are vital for beautification of our shared experiences.  On the walls, on the boundaries between you and me, we can hang pictures of the “us” we make together.  Reminding us that there is something more beyond.  But I can never be part of a “we” until I am fully a “me”.  If my insides are spilling out all over, it’s my job to shore up the containment system, fortify the walls.

It’s not that I don’t like you.  It’s that I like me.  And you’ll like me much better when you know where I stand and where my limits are.  Maybe I’m not as nice as I used to be… or that I seem less nice.   I prefer to say I’m more consistently authentic.

Maybe my new superhero name could be WYSIWYGal.  That’s an upgrade, for sure.

Photo by Troels Myrup (via Flickr).