Boundaries, They Aren't All Bad

Boundaries, the word carries a negative connotation when people usually talk about them. They are seen as a bad thing, something only used during breakups or divorces. It seems that few people talk about the positives and advantages of having boundaries. Right now I’m in what I consider a learning situation, I did or didn’t do a few things and this caused me to push away a person I love and deeply care about.  One thing I didn’t do is set some boundaries and breakdown another one.

The first offender in the situation was work. I work at a retirement village in charge of facility operations. I have many responsibilities that keep me very busy everyday. I will routinely tell someone that I will meet them for dinner or a baseball game etc. at a specific time after work and I am always late, usually very late as I get caught up with something at work. Now there is nothing wrong with working hard, it’s a good thing, but even good traits can be misconstrued and made into bad things. I work between 70-80 hours every week, sometimes more. I work that hard to try to rid myself of a stigma I’ve had with some people since high school. After the last 9 years of working my ass off in school, work and other activities and constantly proving myself to be a great worker, I’m not sure why I even care what they think sometimes, but I do care and its become a huge thorn in my side that I’m constantly trying to dislodge. While working to get this off my back I constantly don’t give myself boundaries to allow myself to have a life outside of work.

The next offender is my phone. I’m a serial social media user. One of the first things I do in the morning is check Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to see what’s going on as if I might miss a life-altering event. Throughout the day I check them again to see what’s happening or to give my opinion on something that is happening. This continues for the whole day, if I’m at dinner, I’m on my phone, watching TV I’m on my phone, if I’m about to go to bed, you guessed it. This is a habit I need to curb and put boundaries on. Thursday I started a social media fast. It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve done lately. I’ve gotten so accustomed to getting my phone out and getting on to Twitter when I’m doing nothing or when I’m working, that now I do it automatically without thinking about it. I’ve become a prisoner to my phone, so a set of boundaries on it once I quit my fast is a must.

The last and biggest boundary that caused a problem is the one I didn’t let down. This was the boundary to myself. While the two previous are big factors into this, the sum of the parts are less than the whole. Sometimes you need to let someone in even farther though you may believe you have let them in fully. This will be the hardest and most difficult boundary to manipulate. This will be the one I will work hardest on and will require my utmost attention to detail and preciseness.

Now I sit here with a hole in my heart that I could have prevented just by realizing the positives of some boundaries and breaking down others. I will learn every lesson I can from this, and if I have a shot to bring back the missing piece in my heart it will have my full and undivided attention.