With everything that has been happening in my life, I decided to go back into therapy. It was not an easy decision, which is ironic because whenever I read about people dealing with similar situations, the first piece of advice is “you should talk to a therapist.”

I don’t mind therapy. I actually treasure that hour of my week when I can pour out all the debris and detritus and plunge my hands into piles of broken bones, dirty hair clumps, and used up tissues and ask myself, “Well, how did this happen?” or “What do we do now?”

I like tugging at the individual parts or turning over the stones and dusting away the schmutz and foul-scented grossness and finding the granite crystals underneath. Not everything is as ugly as I had originally perceived. And by looking at the part furthest from me, by spinning the whatever in a new direction, I can finally find the beauty.

I learned about boundaries over thirty years ago. I was on summer break from college and my mom came bounding into my room, clutching a book about boundaries, and told me that I just had to read it. That it would totally change my life.

I skimmed part of it. I understood the fundamental aspect. People do something you don’t like or makes you uncomfortable, gently and firmly say “stop” and show how those actions are detrimental. Or something like that.

Got it.

Yup.

I’m so great at boundaries. I look like an old, moldy porous sponge, my boundaries are firm. And strong. And unresisting. And unpliant.

Yup.

And the word “No” is just a great word that I really love to use without feeling guilt

Yup. Love the non-guilt-immersed no.

Sure do love feeling like I can build a boundary and it will stay!

That’s why I have about twelve feet of a fence built between two trees. Not attatched to two trees. Just built between two trees.

Because a teenager kept trespassing over my property after being repeatedly told not to and I was so angry I went to Lowes and I bought some lumber and I built me a non-fence. That’s right! Because that will keep teenagers from walking across my property. A twelve foot long piece of open non-fence boundary that is not attatched to the trees to create an impermeable boundary.

You should beware my non-moat too! With my non-alligators that are shaped like my friendly dogs that will lick your face off. Unless you are a squirrel. And then you’re toast.

I slept with my doors open in case my children needed me. Or my dogs. Or the shadows in the hallway. Or the ghost that apparently inhabited my oldest child’s closet but did not pay rent.

I was a bendable teacher to my students’ needs. God, they could spin a sob story and I just ate it up. Because, what if the story was real? What if there really was a traumatic problem that was happening and I didn’t know and they needed that extension? I remember the pains and griefs of high school. I remember my favorite professor, Dr. Van Ness (in college) giving me extensions when life hit the fan. I want to be like him. Kind. Compassionate.

Oh. And the man is amazing at building boundaries that students banged into. Over and over again.

But I have just been a goo puddle. Step in me. Pour into me your pain.

So deadlines because rough guesstimate time points when work might need to be turned in because tomorrow always existed and even though I really hate that song from “Annie” because it’s actually really, really depressing (think about it…the sun will come out tomorrow. But tomorrow is always a day away. That means today will always suck. And I discovered this when I was in fifth grade.). So. Yeah. I could always give the students an incomplete and they could do the work when they were able to and I could grade it and then they could get their grades.

In therapy, I’ve been learning about the misery of my open borders. I take on responsibilities and burdens and problems greedily because if I can fix just one more problem then I will have earned a gold star. I’ll feel better about myself. I’ll feel less guilty for the crime I didn’t commit or the problem that I didn’t cause. I eat other people’s pain and grief so that they can feel less. This isn’t a weird thing. It’s my over-abundant guilt-saturation. And I really haven’t been a horrible person.

If anything. I’m kinda nice.

So I’ve started building boundaries. Itty bitty boundaries that won’t kill anyone if they bang up against it. Just little things like homework being due at a very specific point. And I still waffled and gave the students ten extra minutes because I could. But when those ten minutes elapsed and the time arrived, I literally did a five second countdown and watched the highlighters bleed and the listened to the scurrying steps as the papers were thrust at me because I wasn’t going to take work late.

And the classroom didn’t collapse. The apocalypse didn’t start. My homework boundary was not the genesis of armageddon. Yes. I felt like my boundaries could start a catastrophic response. Not world-ending. But just pain-creating. And I hate pain. And I hate causing pain. So by not building boundaries I won’t cause pain and that makes me a good person.

Did all of the students earn perfect, 100% grades? Nope. And did I writhe in guilt. For a few seconds. But I held my ground with my spongy self and closed the homework into the “to-be-graded” file and breathed for a couple of seconds before starting the class.

In therapy, I described that moment. And then my therapist and I went on to talk about other situations of creating boundaries and how to respond when people steamroll right through them. And how the red line in the sand is not my blood or their blood or anyone’s blood. It’s just my imaginary line that I can stand firm on because I have the right to say no and for that no to be heard and that no to be respected. It won’t cause pain. Maybe some discomfort as we learn to work with each other in a new way.

But I’m not a horrible person for making boundaries. Even if they are mainly with myself. Or my students. But I have to start somewhere.

At the end of my therapy session, my therapist always asks me to reflect and talk about something I learned. I told her that I realized that “boundaries are not barbed wire.”

In Germany, barbed wire is used everywhere to contain grazing cattle. Just seeing the barbs was enough for me to keep my distance. But what I was thinking about in therapy is that no matter what side of the boundary I stand on, if it’s barbed wire and I brush up against it, I am going to get hurt, even if I was the person who built the boundary.

But boundaries are not barbed wire. They won’t hurt me. They won’t hurt the person who brushes up against it. Or runs smack into it. Or steamrolls into it. Note, I will get very angry and will likely say some hurtful things but then I’ll feel guilty again so you will get an apology later. But I’ll still be angry with you so don’t be a steamroller. Or a medieval siege machine or trebuchet or wall-tearer-downer. That’s just not nice.