The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: boundaries

  • Relentless Compassion

    It’s for your own good. Tough love. This is a last resort. Mother knows best. It sounds good, in theory. Like someone has your best interests at heart, and is establishing firm boundaries. It’s about time, some would say. Strong leadership! Yeah! But even the slightest scratch to the surface of this theory reveals its…

  • Actually, No.

    Here’s the thing. (Yes, there’s always a thing.) I was raised to be a good girl. My default position is to respect authority. Be cooperative. Don’t make waves. Accommodate others. And above all, always, always be polite. Well, you know what? Fuck that. All those values are great if everyone is playing by the golden…

  • Learning to Say No

    My upbringing was strange to say the least, but in one way it was typical: as a female, I was always taught to put everyone’s wants and needs ahead of my own. This is a mistake that seems to be made the world over. It does not serve any of us well. Women are expected…

  • Empathy vs. Boundaries

    The other day, in advance of what was expected to be a catastrophic storm, I saw a woman standing on the sidewalk on the south end of my bridge. She was moaning quietly to herself, and rocking back and forth. I was coming back from doing some maintenance nearby, and was due to walk right…

  • On Being Let Down

    I’ve been cranky lately. Grumpy. Impatient. Out of sorts. It all started when it finally dawned on me, at the age of 51, that my sexually abusive stepfather had started grooming me for his pedophilia at the age of 7. The hard core abuse didn’t start until I was 11. Not that that’s an excuse.…

  • Surviving Predation

    When I think of the many times as a child and young adult that I was preyed upon by some sick person, it makes me wonder how anyone survives to adulthood. If I weren’t touched inappropriately, then inappropriate things were said to me, or someone tried to talk me into doing something that I didn’t…

  • Academia

    Recently I had the pleasure of walking through the gorgeous campus of the University of Washington here in Seattle. (Go Huskies!) It gave me butterflies. Not only did the stately brick buildings make me feel like I’d stepped into Hogwarts, but also I got that old familiar feeling. Call it academic fever if you like.…

  • A Real Stand-Up Guy

    I know this guy with severe ADHD who is extremely socially awkward. In fact, most people consider him rather weird. He doesn’t pick up on social cues. He doesn’t get when he takes a joke too far. He doesn’t see when he’s making people uncomfortable. And he can’t tell when people are embarrassed for him.…

  • Is a Puzzlement

    I tend to spend an embarrassingly substantial chunk of my life doing jigsaw puzzles on my laptop. Even when I’m watching movies. I have to be doing something. For some reason puzzles bring me a great deal of comfort and reduce my stress. But why is that? After thinking about it for a day or…

  • “We Accept the Love We Think We Deserve”

    That is one of the main messages in the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and it really hits home for me. My whole life, I’ve had a problem with boundaries, or, actually, a lack of boundaries. In essence, I’ve allowed people to step all over me because I was obsessed with being a…