Boundar-ease

hate politics. I fucking hate politics.

But there’s good news here. I might be going back to school this semester. I asked a friend of mine to help me register, because I seem to lack the ability to get the ball rolling on my own, and that’s okay because the people I have surrounded myself with are willing to help me with that stuff. I’m really blessed.

I think I’m making progress.

I mean, I started to get a mad crazy resentment thing building up in my head over all this toiletry shit that’s been going on between me and Dennis and Brad. I mean, I was proud a couple of days ago when I actually asked brad if he had USED MY MOTHERFUCKING SHAVING RAZOR, and he said that he had. I, at that point, didn’t ask him to stop, because I was too elated that I had actually gotten the balls to even fucking address a boundary, let alone establish and maintain it.

Then I get a text from Dennis asking me for half of the electrical, and I’m all thinking….. Are you fucking serious? Brad takes baths fucking daily, and we have an electric hot water heater, you and him watch TV every fucking night you’re here together. You cook, like, three times as much as I do, and our entire fucking oven is electrical. and you fuckers smoke inside and open the window of your fucking bedroom because it’s too cold outside and we have electric apartment heating…

So I said I only wanted to pay a third.

Via text message, but still!

it was interesting, because he kind of got defensive for no reason as a knee jerk kind of thing, which was interesting to interpret. I was conferring with my ‘socialization squad’ I’ve previously referred to the whole time, and the feedback I received from them regarding the accuracy of my perception of reality was heartening and afforded me the courage required to address the issue to completion. I told him I didn’t wanna pay that much. He said that I owed him money. I told him that yes, I indeed owed him money, but that me owing him money was separate from this issue I was currently addressing.

It was a funny little foray into mindfulness for me because I got to see my hypervigilance in action. Dennis has read-receipts enabled on his phone, so I can see when he has read my text-messages. That information allowed TOO MUCH INFORMATION to be presented to me because I started over-analyzing the shit out of ‘why hasn’t he responded yet? he read it over an hour ago’, etc.. Just trying to be prepared for the future, when I’ll never guess what the future will be, I suppose.

so I woke up in the morning after the text message exchange where I indicated I didn’t wanna pay that much, and there was some weird eggshells on the ground, metaphorically speaking. I decided to take a shower and do some positive self-talk. I straight up transcended reality in that shower.

I acknowledged that I was afraid. I also acknowledged that I had a damn good point. I acknowledged that Dennis was a human being and was most likely not irrational, and also probably afraid of the interaction himself (I mean, in that situation, I could BLOW UP pretty easily right? Wrong. But dennis doesn’t know that). So I had a really mindful shower, got ready for the day, and then walked out into the living room.

I told him that I didn’t have much time, but that I was wondering if he wanted to talk about the ‘issue’. He said yes, and we talked about it. it was funny because when I mentioned the smoking in the apartment, he said something like ‘it’s not like we leave the window open all night or anything’, when I have, in fact, violated his boundaries by going into his room to shut the window that he would have indeed left open… all. night.

Anyway.

After that, I paid him, got picked up for work, and got a haircut. I love the fucking haircut, and I was also kind of surfing on the dopamine wave from earlier. It was just generally a pretty damn good day. I’m really heartened by my ability to recognize a boundary, and, not only ATTEMPT to establish it, but straight up fucking SUCCEED in establishing it!

I’m getting some self-esteem back! This is incontrovertible evidence of my increasing respect and regard for myself. I’m digging it!

Yay silly little things. Makin’ me so happy and whatnot.

J-