Today I Choose Boundaries

I grew up in a household that didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t demonstrate boundaries. Neither of my parents knew what a boundary was. To be fair nobody knew what boundaries were in the 1970’s and if they did, I sure as hell didn’t have them demonstrated.

My father was never home and when he was he was he was drunk, moody and sullen- or, gregariously outrageous and funny. I wanted so much to be like him-then, wanted to be anything but him. My mother, overworked, under appreciated and desperately trying to please everyone around her. I looked at mother with disdain for most of my teen years and did NOT want to be my mother. I am the middle child and I truly live up to that role. I have a brother 6 years older and a younger brother 2 ½ years younger. From the get I was the classic stereotype of a middle child and have been playing that part ever since.

The first and only time I was spanked as a child was enough to catapult me into my own vicious cycle of people pleasing that later morphed into a full-blown alcohol and drug addiction. Can all that happen from one abusive episode? The short answer is yes. I learned from an early age that my foundation wasn’t solid or safe. I learned to perform for mom, dad and everyone else in my life to keep me on stable ground. If you were displeased in any way , I couldn’t cope. My childhood was the breeding ground for recurring behaviours that were abusive to others but more often than not, abusive to myself. I didn’t know how to say no, and, I didn’t want to. I used everything from sex, drugs, alcohol, food, people to help squash the never ending need to be loved and accepted. If that sounds extreme/exhausting, it’s because it is. I was addicted to dopamine/stress and to some extent, I still am.

For the first time in my life I am choosing me. Not in the way I did when I was selfishly lighting my life on fire, no that wasn’t the same thing at all. This time I am pausing. I am thinking. I am deliberately slowing the fuck down so that I can see what is actually happening. The last 6 months has been the hardest of my adult life. I was blindsided by my husband when he told me after 1 year of marriage that he’d essentially changed his mind. There is, like all stories way more to it than that but in a nutshell shell that’s “kinda” what happened. I am picking up the pieces, changing everything from bed linen to locations. Tossing what no longer serves me to make space for yet another new version of me. I am saying no. I am saying yes. I am saying I don’t know yet. I am doing the very opposite of what I have always done. I am speaking up for myself. I am being direct. I am having very tough conversations. I am crying, screaming, howling when I need to and I am, for the first time in decades, choosing to do it alone. I am holding myself accountable in loving boundaries and loving every hard ass minute of it.