the mission: boundaries (recognize, reassign)

i know i said i was going to try to think less in the new year. not two weeks in, i'm failing miserably. ah, well.

the joke is that i have boundary issues. the truth is that i have boundary issues.

we have a new person at work. she's friendly and perfectly nice. she was standing in my cubicle and noticed a little hand-written note had come off my artfully unruly corkboard. she reached over and started to tack it back onto the board. WHAT?!?!? if my reaction was any indication, you would have thought she was trying to pick my pocket or, like, steal my puppy. it's nothing, really - what she did was nothing - but there you are. it's all sorted now but, no, not my finest moment.

there's an expression i use when i feel somebody gets too close (physically, verbally, emotionally). i say there's an assumption of intimacy. homey don't play that. or, more precisely, homey might want to look into why she don't play that.

i had dinner with my core group of friends last week. i've known most of them nearly 4 years. as we enjoyed our dinner, i shared something about myself that was pretty surprising to all of them. we had a great laugh, tried to top each other with our stories, drank more wine, disturbed other restaurant patrons, went home. i later realized that, at some point, i mentioned i had never told my ex-husband about this particular life adventure. it's the kind of thing one might tell one's partner. hmmm.

i have a whole list of reasons i am the way i am - a whole list of life events that contribute to my particular world view. no excuses, just fact. fact and interpretation - by the child i was, and the adult i am. i think about it. i wasn't married for a long span of time but was with my ex-husband for nearly 5 years. truth is, we were very, very different from one another. i think i chose that situation, that partner, so i could hide in plain sight. we're friends, now. he'll probably read this and try to find out my big story.

really, it's not about the story - and it's not that i never tell a partner about my deepest self. my last blog post (from nearly 3 years ago!!) is proof(ish) of that. the person i talked about in that post was back in my life for a while at one point. he knew lots. he's not around now, though we keep in touch from time to time, and i do feel i learned a lot from my time with him. it was challenging in many ways, rewarding in more. isn't that how we describe hard-earned growth?

i would like to have a close relationship. a true partnership. saying out loud that i am a bit of a head case seems counterintuitive, i suppose, for cultivating something good. maybe not. copping to this tendency might be just the right thing to move me through. either way, i don't care -  it's a pretty big step for me. thanks for reading.