Fuck me.
A lot has happened in a relatively short while, so this one might be a little personal, but honestly… That’s kinda what these Pickup Truck Diaries are about, right? Using the context of my strange and well-lived life to provide some sort of awareness or education, and maybe a forced laugh or two!
So where do we start regarding boundaries?
Honestly, it’s a term I didn’t know much about until two to three years ago, when I first started in counselling. I’m not sure if I’ve ever talked about it in this series, but even accepting counselling was a bit of a boundary in and of itself for fuck’s sakes!
If you’re a regular reader of this series, you know I come from a poorer logging-family background. And as many white men in the trades can attest to, not many in that realm know what the hell boundaries are, let alone how to assert them! And of course, seeing a counsellor was always interpreted as the psycho case end-point for when people went full on crazy.
Skip ahead fifteen years and I know better now.
Not only should everybody be in counselling, ESPECIALLY the redneck hick loggers and other trades folk, but they should be learning about shit like boundaries and how to handle change at the same time.
I didn’t know what boundaries were growing up. In my family, the parents had the final say, and most of my teen years were spent flailing back at the established order of “mom and dad know best.” I was an angry teen at best, and going through my crippling disabilities of anxiety and depression at worst. I have no idea how I was even functional back then without meds or counselling as support to help me with my various disabilities.
See, a boundary is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a firm line in the sand you establish to protect yourself, or to keep yourself safe. Sometimes it looks like a stern conversation, other times it can look like an ultimatum, and sometimes it’s just an expectation that’s communicated on a specific topic or issue.
One of my own problems is I had no boundaries for most of my life. I was a people pleaser – trained to do whatever people wanted me to do, even if it was toxic or negative for my own self. I was trained to do whatever people needed, and it’s an easy way to lose oneself. You become an extension of the will of others, unable to differentiate where you end and they begin.
A lot of relationships can go toxic due to these lacks in boundaries, both romantic and platonic. If your partner’s will is overriding or extinguishing your own wants, desires, and needs, taking a step back to reassess boundaries can often be a crucial step in figuring out where the toxicity or the problem lies.
For myself? I often have to be extremely proactive in taking that step back and figuring out how far I’m bending over backwards to make other people around me happy at my own expense. And hell, I am BAD at it. Very bad at it, in fact.
I have to ask myself the questions purposefully:
“Am I happy doing this?”
“Is this fulfilling or enriching?”
“Am I growing, evolving, or changing as a person in a positive way?”
“Where are my boundaries lacking, and how can I reinforce them?”
“Who is actively stomping on the boundaries I’ve already set for myself?”
And there are a dozen more questions I won’t bore you with.
Which brings us to change. Right now, I’m leaving the field of public education for the non-profit sector. Which comes with some huge reflections on boundaries. The public service system, no matter what form it usually takes, thrives on trampling boundaries. This is usually because you are always expected to give more, be more, provide more, and holistically, your effectiveness as a public servant is gauged by how self-sacrificing you ultimately become.
At some point, I think many folks who serve the greater good of the public go through this crisis of faith. No matter how much good you’re doing. Is the greater good, however you define it, worth your well-being?
The answer is always no. Which might sound selfish at first glance.
But remember that old anecdote about putting your own oxygen mask on first in the airplane before helping others? It remains true in the realms of self-care and sanity when it comes to burn-out as much as it does within the confines of a plane emergency.
Change can often give us the chance to reassess our boundaries. We can ask ourselves, how have we allowed our boundaries to lapse? Are we achieving what we originally set out to achieve when we took a specific job, project, or task upon ourselves? Are we suffering without a clear reason as to why we are allowing ourselves to suffer?
In Buddhism, there’s the concept of divine suffering, in that people can better comprehend the positives of life as gauged against the suffering we endure. And in understanding things exactly as they are in the present, we can better strive towards enlightenment.
But I’m also not a fucking Buddhist, and I am not striving towards enlightenment, only towards continuing my journey as a glutton for knowledge, information, and achievement. The pain and suffering that comes from my journey is hardly divine, it is merely the status quo of existence as a human, as the old existentialists and nihilists would love to remind me.
As humanity has created the divine, we can also deconstruct the divine.
“God is dead,” as a famous philosopher once said before all his work was distorted and skewed post-mortem by his sister into proto-nazi ideology.
Change is the opportunity to identify new boundaries, and re-examine old boundaries. In my move, I am reflecting upon all the ways in which I have allowed myself to “lessen myself” in exchange for the happiness or comfort of others.
Small things – like choosing to live on my own and thus exert control over my space are key hallmarks of this. I am tired of living in a tidy but unclean space, of the yappy little dog next door always barking at any and every noise and disrupting my work or leisure, and of the heavy flat-footed walking of my upstairs neighbours.
I’m limited by my distinct lack of wealth of course… But there are opportunities within any change. To eliminate intrusions upon my boundaries, and also to establish new ones. Even old disruptions to my boundaries are capable of being reasserted – for example, having a family that never asked permission to enter someone’s space… Well, with having a place to myself, now I have a domain in which I hold the space to keep my domain sacred.
Beyond simple living situations, I’m also exploring what boundaries mean in the artistic and expressive space.
For example, I’m realizing that collaborative art is difficult when you are striving for an integrity to your art that elevates it as high as possible. Working with others, sometimes you are blessed with a given community that understands your desire to push art to the limits, to go for huge emotional resonance in an audience and educate them on key concepts, topics, or epiphanies.
Other times?
You’re gonna be trapped with shallower communities obsessed with pulpy and simplistic portrayals of things that have already been done into the ground as derivative drivel.
So where could I establish my boundaries in art?
Well, if I hope to uphold my boundaries for my own artistic expectations and outcomes, I need to surround myself with other similar artists of whatever medium I happen to be working in, ones who are capable of the depth and breadth of emotion and enlightenment I seek. That might mean vetting any community I engage with before actually setting foot within such a realm. That could look like a dozen examples in actual practice, from casting, to consequence-free early test engagements, to open acknowledgement of the ultimate goals of a project long before the project actually begins.
Historically, I am bad when it comes to change. I tend to find a comfortable norm or routine, and then can become trapped in that normal without pulling together the self-awareness and independence to step away when I need to for my own mental health and fulfillment.
I think it’s normal for this to happen to people. Why do people keep working jobs they hate? Living with roommates or family they don’t get along with? Accepting sub-par conditions or terms that are thrust upon them because there is no open or easy alternative? Humans are creatures of habit, as any substance abuse or other such factors can attest to.
But there’s hope – in that becoming aware of boundaries can help us assert and protect both old boundaries and also establish new ones.
Change is often merely the catalyst to help that process along.
Hell, I’m living it in real-time right now!
Yet I remain crucially aware that being aware of a problem does not magically fix a problem, and proactivity is often worth its weight in gold.
Perhaps we can all look for ways to change our lives, if only to help us re-establish our boundaries and examine our lives to ensure we are capable of living such lives in better ways.
But I’m just some ex-hick logger family kid, so what so I know?
Be good out there, eh?
Now, let’s get the fuck out of here.
-McRae
