The Boundary

What a terrifying thing to set, what a terrifying thing to cross. Don’t build walls, build walls. Keep people out, but let them in. Protection and invitation. Cry to be heard and understood, but don’t explain. Tracing the lines of things broken in the past, the shards of past protections crunching beneath my feet, trudging ever forward. That moment, just before that unknown boundary breaks, chest tightening in a way that you cannot quite name. Splinters under the skin, heat flushing the face, small and ignorable. Sharp enough to know that something is spilling over the sides. 

It is that some unspoken rule of engagement has been shattered to the wind, my own embedded fragments stabbing me, the fear in my chest of breaking other’s invisible barriers, as had been done to me. The fear of causing that pain to another human being stops me in my tracks and brings tears to my eyes. The effort to set out the boundary is a monumental effort to say that this is where I stand and this is how I will be treated. To watch people brush by those, to ignore those fully, glass shattering under their bodyweight. The smell of humanity washing over our protective bubbles, entering uninvited into my private sanctums.

The sanctum, a place where I am allowed to exist truly and wholly, where my mask falls from my face and I cease to pretend.  I strongly believe all people have this inner sanctum of safety within their mind’s eye. These boundaries protect that space, showing us fractures into each other’s lives. These emotional spaces that when crossed damage both parties for ignoring the warning signs. 

To barge into that space and aggressively ignore my objection. There is a heartlessness within such careless action. The refusal to recognize common humanity lacks not only empathy, but intelligence. It has nowhere near the power that kindness bestows. 

The gentle breath of air when boundaries are respected. The soft inhale as those invited enter the space, filling it with love, joy, peace, laughter and smiles. The exhale of anxiety leaving my body as a feeling of security returns. It is safe to exist here. These are people who love and respect me, and I them. The level of kindness offered here is found nowhere else, except the relationships you invest in wholly. People see only fragments of each other and have a hard time understanding the full shape of it, the constellations of stories and threads to be who I am and make the decisions that I do. The tapestry of all that I am, of who I am, can never be fully seen by anyone else. The fine cracks within myself I hide in public. I fear being perceived. But within this sanctum of gentle love, the tapestry unknowingly unfolds and becomes so much more. 

The maintaining of the boundary is efforts in love and patience with those in your life. Dealing with the constant and unending tending to the garden of emotionality, finding the rocks of my past and gently setting them aside. The guilt of maintaining the garden, of deweeding and removing those that have blown past into my sanctum and expect worship and respect. Snipped away with the pruners of intelligence and emotional distance. The guilt of not knowing if the thing cut needed to be left, if it was native or something unpleasant to exist in my space. The worry that it makes me a bad person for removing such a thing from myself, instead of enduring the parasitism of it all. Cutting away the spare energy spent and time wasted, allowing the rest of the garden to thrive and flourish, taking up that space rudely taken. 

Occasionally finding those broken pieces of glass among the stones, boundaries of the past shattered by people within the garden, ones that I cannot remove. Those that have become gnarled oaks and knotted maples, space taken, but steady, adapted to the space and the area. As I stand, the grass soft beneath my feet, the sunshine of peace begins to break the clouds of doubt. The fear of being ‘too much’ receding slowly, ebbing and flowing with the breaths in the garden. 

The sun’s warmth ebbs as it strains through the clouds smothering it, a chill going down my spine, as the guilt bites at my ankles like a silly puppy. The hollow gnawing sensation that sets me to work in the garden, tending to my plants, the gnarled oak and knotted maple watching stoically from the sides as the work goes on. A panicked purpose settling in my hands as the work progresses, analyzing each plant and rock, seeing all the images of choices I made both good and bad rushing back to me as though I had made them yesterday. The fear that as I make these boundaries, my garden will rise in revolt and say that I am watering it too often, that I partake in its peace too frequently. That fear of the garden betraying me, my inner sanctum rising against me in revolt, is the emotional cost of tending the garden at all. 

The sun peeks out again as breath shatters panic, the hope of maintaining returning. The peace that the plants evoke, ever shifting and forever forgiving, the sturdy steadiness of the oak and the maple. And the hands find peace, lying still for a moment as the panic fades and peace returns to the space. 

A thing learned over time, from my mom and dad, my oak and my maple, is the recognition that the garden is yours to tend, and the tending of it is an act of love. It seems to be bursting from me at the seams and yet I find only failing ways to express that love, the gnawing worry that I don’t express it enough, that plants may lie ignored and trampled around the garden. The effort it takes, to give myself the space to return to those without guilt, to check in and see if there is something to be done to save the relationship. Though some may wither and die, others will flourish and bloom, in unexpected and exciting ways that change the garden as a whole. The work, emotional and otherwise, loads the garden apron with even more tools and yet with confidence I can move freely in the space of the inner sanctum. Unlearning the omens that I see written across the mulch and dirt. That the garden will rise up. Understanding that this is a learned fear, not writing in the sky of things to come. Yet another rock unearthed from the garden. The peace and respite I give myself as I sit on the iron chair looking out, breathing softly, water refreshing me. 

A sigh, I slap my knees, and stand. The sun shines once more on the garden, the guilt asleep within the plants and bushes. I will keep tending.