Heartbreaking Boundaries...

I don’t know about you, but I am not good at setting boundaries and even worse about keeping them.  I do not know why it is so hard for me.  I just know it is.  And I am not really sure that knowing why it is so hard would help me set and hold the boundaries any better. It is just hard, and I have not done the best job with it.  Most especially with my kids.

But here I am again, on the edge of having to make hard decisions.  Terrified to hold the boundary I set, but knowing that if I give in, again, we will just be right back here in a couple of months.  It feels like it will kill me. But it won’t.

I am in the way, again, and I know it.  Standing in the way of someone else’s growth while I stand in the way of my own.  I want to say that I have allowed this situation to continue because I love the person so very much, and that is true.  But honestly, I have allowed the behavior to remain because I am terrified of what happens to her, to us, if I set and hold the boundary.  I, of course, fear the worst.  I fear that my boundary will be her undoing.  I fear that she will hate me forever.  I fear, I fear, I fear.  So I have allowed an unhealthy situation to continue, persist and grow all because I am terrified.

And this is what I have learned about my own failure to set and hold boundaries...it isn’t because I love the other person so much, it is because I am afraid of what happens on the other side of the holding.  Once I remove the parts of myself most useful to this other person, do they just leave me?  Discard me because I am no longer useful to them?  Is my value that precarious?  I keep confusing love and self care with codependence and enabling.  It is a fine line, but I fucking cross it all the fucking time.

I spent the day yesterday vacillating around a hard decision, a hard boundary.  But no matter which way I thought about the situation, I can find no other way than the way I fear the most.  I cannot see my way clear to another decision.  I cannot.  Any other decision leads us right back to where we are right now.  And I fucking hate it here.  

Setting and holding the boundary is going to break my heart and likely hers as well.  And I have failed to set it for awhile now because I do not want my heart broken, anymore than I want to break hers.  I do not want that.  And I do not want to injure or hurt this other person.  But I can no longer believe that things will change if I allow the situation to persist.  I cannot do this anymore and so I have to be the one who changes.  And I fear she will hate me and this will be the end of us.  And today, I have to be ok with that because going forward as we are doesn’t feel good either and is keeping us both stuck in this endless loop that feels like shit.  And is likely doing irreparable damage to our relationship and to her ability to live a good, productive life.

For me, all boundaries come with heartbreak.  I don’t set or hold the boundaries because I love the person so much.  But in the end, it is my failure to set and hold the boundaries that erodes the love anyway.  And when I love someone else more than I love and respect myself, that is always a recipe for disaster.  

I am not enjoying all the loss I am experiencing in my life right now.  I feel like a total failure and that life is just spiraling.  But I know that this is what happens when it is time to change and level up.  All the old ways have to stop, have to change, and that change never comes the way that I want it to.  I want it to be easy and painless, not involving gut wrenching heartbreak, fear and loss.  But that isn’t how this whole thing works, and I know it...

I am not sure where I am being moved to.  I am not sure where I am going or what will happen next.  I do know that I can no longer live with the status quo and I cannot rely on this person’s word because she has broken it so many times, I have lost count and any kind of belief in her or her word.

So I will set and hold the boundary while breaking my own heart and probably hers in the process.  I do not want to do either, but there doesn’t seem to be any other option for either of us.  I hope it matters that I love her so much that I am no longer willing to allow this toxic situation to occur.  I hope it matters that I am doing this because I love her, not because I don’t.  I am withdrawing my support because my support isn’t helping her or me.  It is allowing a dysfunctional situation to proliferate.  And while I have known it for a long time, I haven’t had the willingness to change it.  I was just stuck in a loop that I helped create because the loop allowed me to believe there was hope of change.  Yesterday decimated that.  I do not have any hope no matter what I choose.  So I arrive at the place that I do something, almost anything, differently.  To not do that will just perpetuate a cycle of relating and living that I have come to detest.  It brings out a version of me that I do not like at all.  And while I cannot force another person to change, I can change. I can do things differently, no matter how much that hurts. No matter how much I fear the result to me and to her.

I wish boundary setting did not require me breaking my heart and likely that of others too.  But change doesn’t seem to come in my life without an attendant amount of grief, loss, heartbreak and pain.  Those are the heavy price that must be paid to arrive at a different place in this life.  And while I have no idea what happens next, I rest a little easier knowing that I am not making a rash decision.  I am not making an angry decision.  I am making this decision because I love her and love myself and want something better for both of us.

Again, still...