On Setting Personal Boundaries (and my childhood obsession with violence)

Tonight I’m listening to an old cassette tape from my childhood that I haven’t listened to in at least 30 years. I must have been 8 or so I’m guessing. I can hear myself playing with one of the neighbors. I made him be the Soviet Union because I wanted to pretend war and wanted him to be the bad guy and wanted it to feel real even though I had no idea what the Soviet Union even was.
so much joy I took from destruction. I can hear myself now and gosh I sound so freaking happy as I pretend to blow stuff up and kill people. I’m not sure what kind of toys we’re playing with. I think something called construx or something like that.
Such fighting and us vs them mentality. I remember that perspective so well, where I’d see these cartoons like Trans Formers or even the more real war movies that I’d see bits and pieces of and I’d wish that i could be there, fighting and getting shot at, risk of death at every turn, but with a clear enemy that I love to hate and who deserves to die.
It just keeps going and going, explosion after explosion–oh now I’m talking about how big my bombs are and trading them with my friend.
And the tape just ended. Had ABBA recorded on the other side but then halfway through more of our pretend war so now we continue the battle or maybe this is the beginning. I am kind of surprised by how well I communicate. I thought I remember being really shy and nearly incapable of making friends, which I guess was still probably mostly true except for times like this. But it’s interesting how much I’m trying to bond with someone over the concept of war and death and the idea that we need someone to fight in this world in order to make us feel whole.
I’m wholly opposed to that idea now. I want my entire persona to be about how we are all a big team, we are all trying to work together here.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about boundaries
Ooh I guess the war ended, now it’s just empty blank tape. Maybe my mom called us away and I forgot to hit stop.
Yeah, so boundaries. Personal boundaries. that’s what I really wanted to talk about tonight since it’s just been on my mind lately and seems like something most people myself included really struggle with like how to set them, how to communicate them, how to know where to draw the line. Such a complicated topic that it’s like for much of my life I just played it by ear and did what felt right in the moment. And what that did was it allowed people to manipulate me and I wound up prioritizing fun people over ethical and intelligent people. Like I was so desperate for fun and excitement that I put up with abuse instead what I’m doing now is I’m trying to focus more on ethics and behavior and on their impact on my long term health and ability to make smart choices in the friends that I make. You’ve got to make the short term sacrifices of cutting out some of the fun people who you know will eventually somehow turn sour due to their unhealthy habits and poor life choices. Instead you draw in the “goody two-shoe’s” types and take the time to understand them and find where and how they have fun–and maybe “goody two shoes” is not the right word. Like, you don’t want friends who blindly obey all the rules just to obey and avoid thinking for themselves. That’s every bit as bad as not caring about the law at all. I mean you want friends who think and care and feel and make choices with thought and foresight.
I’m specifically thinking of a friend who disrespected me a couple times and I just kind of stopped being friends with him. I guess it doesn’t matter what–well the first incident was reckless and angry driving so I just decided I’d never ride with him again, but then he called one of my best friends a cunt and after that I just didn’t want to deal. But I still at that point, which I think this was like a year ago, I still hadn’t really figured out how to set boundaries. I just knew I needed to start. So I just stopped inviting him over. Now I hear from a mutual friend that he feels unwelcome in our home and golly I hope this isn’t getting too personal as I’m still trying to figure out how much I should reveal except no one is going to read this anyway and if they do it’ll probably help a lot more than hurt for them to know the truth cuz if he ever reads this he’ll know who he is.
Anyway, what’s my point, boundaries. I should have told him, “look, I don’t accept people screaming at me that my friends are cunts. You have an issue with them we can discuss that but only when you can be respectful about it.”
and it’s like, he would tell people to “shut up” in discussions and–I guess that’s not important. What’s important is figuring out the line you want to draw and having the courage to enforce it and then the intelligence to effectively communicate it to the people who might potentially violate it.
So it’s like, I wish there was a good way of expressing your boundaries right up front to people. Like I want to wear it on a shirt that says, “I don’t invite folks to parties if they engage in ” — and then as I wrote that line I realized I couldn’t finish it cuz there’s just too many things to list and it’s just too based on individual perception.
Like this guy I’m talking about lives in a different world from me. I’m a software developer he’s in construction. The standards those two industries have for behavior and communication styles are wildly different. Much of what would be common in construction would get you sent straight to HR as a programmer. I had calm, liberal, science-based parents who treated me like an equal whenever it was reasonable to do so. I can only assume he had parents who yelled at him all the time and treated him like he was less than them.
And I said in a previous entry that I live in a magical kumbaya world of unicorns and rainbows and every day is filled with joy and love but to keep that I must pull away from the people who have not figured out how to control their anger, don’t feel empathy or make decisions based on more than just their own needs.
And now I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything really in this entry except to say that setting boundaries is hard and complicated but we need to do it anyway. I kind of feel less confident in my ability to set boundaries than I did before starting this which is interesting. It seemed so easy to outline when it was just in my head.
Can I even think of an actionable item for myself?
What’s my list of things I won’t tolerate?
Calling people stupid, threats of violence–and for any of these I mean if they’re directed toward anyone. For the most part if someone calls me a cunt or my friend a cunt, it’s like, that’s about the same level for me. It may actually be less offensive if they attack me. I guess it depends on the friend they are attacking but I really don’t want people as close friends who push a narrative of “us vs them”.
Gosh this entry is really disjointed. This is not what I envisioned. Can’t seem to stay on a topic more than a sentence or two.
But oh yeah the need to not blame the person who needs to be cut out. Golly I almost forgot about that one cuz that’s real important. It’s not about them being “bad”. I don’t ever want to use my boundaries to pass judgement on others or tell them how to live their lives. This is just about me and the world that I want to build for myself. So I gotta communicate to people that they made me feel a certain way like “I’m getting this sense that you feel certain emotions toward me that if this were Twitter, could be summarized as “hate” for lack of a better word and I accept that that’s just my perceptions. I’m not saying you hate me (or XYZ) I’m just saying that’s what my feelings are telling me. I accept that may be irrational but I need to act on them anyway until I get new information so I’d like to remove you from my life in the most respectful and least harmful way possible”.
Something like that you know, something that communicates honestly how you feel and why but at the same time, does not blame them and puts it all on you. Because their argument that they simply have a different communication style is sort of legitimate. We might call it being a bullying asshole but they see it as needing to be tough in order to survive in a ruthless world.
Okay it’s like 1 AM. I should call it there.

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