I want to talk about boundaries.
Boundaries are those metaphorical walls we build for protection over a lifetime of learning what is good for us and what is bad for us.
I don’t think they should be moralized. That is, no one can tell you the wall you build for protection is good or bad. It is your wall.
Can you imagine not having walls around your bathroom?
Neither can I.
I have six boys.
Every house or apartment we lived in attests to the power of boys, no matter their age or temperament, to knock an awesome hole in the wall.
I finally gave my sons an official moniker to celebrate the biggest hole ever when one of my sons backed the other into the drywall and the resulting hole matched the exact shape and size of his hind region. Unfortunately, this was my largest kid. He wrestled in the heaviest weight class in high school.
After that gnarly hole, I dubbed my boys “The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang”.
(and yes…there were a great many jokes about “holes” and “butts”. I just took the high road as moms are supposed to when boys and butts are involved)
Butt…since Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was before their time, they didn’t get the inference, anyway.
That’s okay. These titles are strictly for parents’ use.
So, yeah…walls get holes. They get knocked down. Sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose.
All that can be done is to rebuild.
Or, as in the case with co-dependency…just leave a hole.
Now to use the analogy of a bathroom wall inside a house--you have your house wall, but all the interior walls have been knocked down. So anyone you invite into your home gets to see EVERYTHING.
Not such a good idea. We all have parts of our lives we don’t want (or need) to share with the world.
So after a time, I stopped inviting people into my house.
And that house was me.
I had allowed all my walls to be knocked down and I didn’t know how to repair them.
Of course, at the time, I didn’t realize I needed to repair anything.
Denial can be very comfortable…very safe. There are times when denial should not be messed with.
It’s a tricky thing to deal with hurting people because of it.
That’s why Al Anon became so valuable.
At first, I didn’t understand why each meeting repeated the rules and traditions, or why the constant reminder of anonymity and no “cross-talk” (no responding to another person’s sharing). I didn’t get any of these rituals. But rituals are necessary for the co-dependent.
I had to have predictability, or I could not function.
After the first month of meetings, the truth began to seep in.
Yes. It was seepage. That’s how these things work.
(bathroom metaphors aside...forgive me, I do have six boys after all)
These were the boundaries of Al Anon.
And within those boundaries, the truth could work its way into my heart.
No one could rip the blanket of denial off and expose me.
I felt as if I would turn to ash in the brightness.
But in the safety of Al Anon boundaries, I peeked out from under my blanket began to see that others had blankets too. And the boundaries provided a safe place to inch the denial out of our lives.
No one expected anything from me.
No one confronted me.
No one even knew my last name.
And when I unknowingly made a mistake and knocked against those walls, there was someone there to gently remind me…without judgment…the rules that kept us all safe.
My walls were intact.
It really was a new way of thinking.
As a co-dependent, I lived and died each day by someone else’s response to what I said or did.
…and we haven’t even touched on the facebook issues yet. Oy!
This is not to disparage facebook in any way. It has been lifeline for me in my isolation. But there is always learning curve, isn’t there? I’ll write a post about my adventures (and misadventures) with facebook another time.
To sum up my thoughts about boundaries, let me just say every day I find another brick to put in my wall.
Still, there’s always someone who knocks a hole in it.
Sometimes it’s an accident, sometimes on purpose.
But I’m learning how to do the repairs.
…and I’m also learning where to leave the openings.
Easy does it, friends.
