It’s not you it’s me. This is what I am starting to really embrace around boundaries.
Biggie and I are learning boundaries together. Boundaries for me have always been like having a pocket with a hole in them. I sort of kind of have an idea of the structure, and it can hold my phone at a walk, but if I go for a run, my phone might jiggle through the bottom of my pocket, down my pant leg and into my shoe.
My current journey is a process of stitching up that perpetual hole at the bottom of my pocket.
For example, Biggie likes to invite himself into my personal space all the time, one scenario being when I fill his water buckets he will leave his hay and come over to me to interact. While I love and appreciate that he is wanting to engage with me, he often will engage in a way that doesn’t make me feel good (hook me into him with his chin, bite my sleeve, shove me forward with his nose, put the entirety of the weight of his head onto my shoulder, scratch his chin on the top of my head, etc).
Historically in the past (til like yesterday, let’s get real) I’ve blamed him for going through that very hole in my pocket that I’ve left unstitched. “You are rude” “You are pushy” “You are hurting me” all the while, sending him away, leaving him no structure or parameters for the next time we meet…leaving him searching down the pant leg and into the shoe for the phone…
For me I’ve worried that setting boundaries are going to trigger his abandonment, make him feel like I don’t love him, cause him to be offended or worried and not want to engage, when in fact all they’re going to do is create clarity about the size and shape of my pocket, so that he can better decide if he wants to be in there or not.
I’m not going out of the pocket and asking him to hold my phone for me while I go for a run, I’m creating a container and saying this is the pocket, if you choose to be in it, here are the perimeters in which you are allowed to explore. Clarity, about MY pocket, not about all the things he chooses to do outside of that space.
So, here’s to choosing some stronger thread this time, not because I need to ensure the phone never ever leaves the pocket, but because I want to know that when I put it there, I can feel good about where it is.