For years i avoided boundaries the way some people avoid difficult medical results. Said yes to things i had no real capacity for. Let comments slide that quietly chipped away at how i saw myself. Avoided conflict at almost any cost, convinced that keeping the peace was the same thing as keeping the relationship.
I believed, genuinely, that having limits would make me seem difficult. Less easy to be around. Less liked. So i stayed flexible and available on the outside while something resentful slowly built up underneath, mostly unnoticed by anyone but me.
That resentment leaked out eventually anyway, just in messier forms than a clear boundary would have taken. Passive aggression instead of honesty. Quiet distance instead of a direct conversation. Relationships souring slowly because i never said the thing that needed saying while it still mattered.
When i finally started setting boundaries, clumsily and awkwardly at first, i braced for the fallout i had always feared. Some of it did happen. A few relationships could not survive me having limits, which told me plainly what those relationships had actually been built on the whole time.
But something else happened too, something i had not expected. Most people respected me more, not less. The boundaries gave people an actual sense of who i was, instead of the agreeable blur i had been offering for years out of fear. Conversations got more honest, because i was no longer quietly performing a flexibility i never really felt.
Boundaries were never about pushing people away. They were about finally showing people my actual shape, instead of the shapeless version i used to avoid friction. People can only respect a limit they know exists. Without one, you are quietly teaching everyone around you that your time and energy are endlessly available, and most people will take exactly as much as you allow, often without even realising they are taking too much.
I am still practising this, especially with people i have a long history of saying yes to without thinking. But every time i hold a boundary anyway, the relationship either deepens with honesty, or proves it was never as solid as i believed.
Either way, now i actually know.
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