This blog post is one half draft I’ve been working on for two weeks and one half reaction to something that happened yesterday. I slept on this and cleaned it up a lot, but it’s something I wanted to talk about anyway, so, let’s go… :\

I never really appreciated before how important boundaries are to my Borderline Personality Disorder. I can follow rules when it means protecting the people I love, I just need those rules to be clearly and directly communicated to me. Uncertainty scares, confuses, and upsets me. Boundaries are certain. A clearly communicated boundary is something that I can latch on to and hold myself steady with.

I feel like this reinforces a running theme for me: I need direct communication. If someone wants to communicate something to me they need to do it directly and clearly. I cannot do metaphors or analogies or anything like that. Those don’t mean anything to me when it comes to interpersonal relationships. All they do is massively confuse me. So when I recently got a very clear and direct communication of a new boundary, I understood it perfectly right away. I understand why the boundary is in place: it’s to protect that person.

So then it hurts like hell to be put in the position of enforcing her boundary that was placed on me. Why am I enforcing her boundary? Because she broke her own boundary.

I absolutely feel crushed by some rules of course, but I understand them and will not be crossing them. For two years I’ve had a boundary placed on me to not reach out because she (a different she) would not be able to handle hearing from me randomly. I did not expect that yesterday I would end up using that exact same wording for someone else. It really sucks that I have to say something like that so that she will respect the boundary she originally set.. I get it. God I fucking GET IT. I miss you too!

I miss you so much.

I wish to heaven and back that things weren’t like this. But what am I supposed to do? Yeah, I super wanted to talk to you about the Xenoblade Genesis reveal, and sure, I did gush with you in a moment of weakness after you messaged me. Yes I briefly had a post up about how I wished that we could gush together about it. That was just venting that we can’t. I’m allowed to vent in my own spaces.. :( But no, I was never going to message you out of the blue to do it: It does not meet your requirements for re-opening conversation.

It’s so awful when a boundary is not respected by all parties involved. It hurts when you set a boundary and it gets violated. It also hurts when the person not respecting it is the very person who set it. Now, there’s definitely a difference between “rescinding a boundary” and “violating a boundary.” This was definitely not a rescindment. Just like setting a boundary, rescinding one requires clear and direct communication. Even if it was rescinded I was still already stepping back anyway to make sure I didn’t make a massive mistake and hurt multiple people.

But why does that happen? Why do some people see boundaries as soft when I’m trying my damnedest to respect it as the hard boundary it was communicated as? I could also treat it as soft, but then I’d be in trouble. Shouldn’t that go both ways…? It hurts when limits are placed on me and then those limits are not respected. Why am I being muzzled and then basically what-feels-like-teased or some other word that I don’t know about it? It invokes an emotion that I don’t know the name for. Like I’m always on edge waiting for the boundary maker to violate her own boundary, and then when exactly that happens I am put in the horrible position of either being party to breaking her boundary or being forced to be the enforcer for, again, her boundary. I don’t want to do this, it hurts!

Boundaries exist to keep us from getting hurt, and hurt happens when anyone violates those boundaries :\

Right now I have three damnably clear and all equally difficult boundaries set by three different women I love:

1. Two years ago from S after our break up: ‘Do not message me randomly, I won’t be able to handle it.’
2. A few months ago by my wife: ‘__ ___ ____ _ ____________ ____ ____, __ ____ ____ __.’
3. A couple weeks ago from L: ‘Do not contact me unless it’s an emergency or _____ __ _____ __ ____.’

(sorry, but, some of that is a little too specific to put up here; also single quotes indicate that these are paraphrases)

Boundary 3 came in response to me taking a big step back so that I didn’t make any mistakes and blow things up again. Which I feel is a legitimate response. I’m not upset by that. I promised I would come back after I worked through my stuff and her boundary was placed because she couldn’t handle me coming back unless a lot of things were different. This is a very clear boundary, the reasoning makes perfect sense to me, and I respect her and her boundaries.

Same with boundary 1. I DESPERATELY miss S. She was one of my best friends. When we stopped talking I lost fully half of my best friends. And yet I will not cross that line and break her boundary.

So, those are the conditions under which I have been living my life lately and will continue to live my life until clear and direct changes are communicated. Because I have to. To protect these women I love. When I am told exactly what will hurt them then it becomes very easy to make it my mission in life to never do that thing that will hurt them.

Boundaries can be very painful and feel very limiting, but they can help protect people and prevent much worse pain. And as someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, boundaries mean a lot to me. They steady me and give me solid ground to stand on. Boundaries help me understand what’s what when otherwise I might be spiraling from confusion. I’ve always known they were good and healthy generally, but figuring out how they can calm my BPD has been reassuring (even if the situations requiring the boundaries are sad).