next, please
I remember the day I realized I was empowered to make my own decisions about the friends I keep. Well, I remember roughly the age and the general place I was in my life, anyway. I had just completed my teens, was set for my twenties and was sick of chasing friends around. I had sufficiently exhausted myself in making excuses for the way they were, the hurtful things they said and their lack of presence when I needed them.
My soft-spot is the undying belief in someone I love – no matter how infuriating, hurtful or abandoning that friend might be on the outside, if I have seen the brilliant light of their heart and sparkle in their eye at one point or another, I will absolutely refuse to ignore it. I will fight and coax and pray and beg for it to come back when it fizzles – and it is utterly exhausting. It’s like when you’re camping and the fire begins to die so you curl up around the smoking embers to protect it with the wall of your body and feed it dried grass and twigs and rub sticks together and blow and blow and blow until you collapse in fatigue, light-headed and sick from the smoke, feeling like a fool for having tried so hard on a lost cause.
Yup.
With the light of this realization glowing in my belly, I quit apologizing for things I didn’t do wrong. I stopped trying to make plans with friends who always flaked out on me and I stopped calling the friends who were such Negative Nancies. ”It’s time to take care of mySELF first,” I sang. ”I won’t let anyone else ever bring me down.”
Boundaries are healthy. In fact, I highly suggest investing in some boundaries in life. It helps identify the things in your life that you cannot live without, the things about your general well-being that you refuse to compromise and allows you to recognize what you will and will not do for the sake of a friendship.
With the inspiration of the few incredibly hard-headed, strong-willed and some might even call “bitchy” women friends I had, I decided to start standing up for my Self and my Heart. And then I let those friendships fade.
It’s been going really well, if you ask me. These boundaries that I built have allowed me to let go of some incredibly unhealthy relationships, both romantic and not. I have learned to take care of myself first (which is imperative before I begin to take care of anyone else). It has rebuilt my self-esteem as now I don’t sit around and wonder why I’m not worthy enough of this friend calling me back or what I did to deserve that friend being nasty to me. And in time, a few of those “bitchy” friends came back into my life and continue to this day to be my best friends.
But now… now comes the yoga.
With the creation of all these boundaries, I became a little overzealous. I wrapped up around the little flame of my heart so tightly because I was afraid that anyone who came too close would smother my fire – and now all I want to do is let the bright light of love burst out, pour forth and envelop everyone around me.
But it is hard. I didn’t realize those walls had grown so thick.
What happens when an old friend comes back to apologize? Or when someone new comes into my life and wants to share in my heart? How do I learn to not approach every friendship with impending fear of being hurt or abused… but still keep the boundary of my own heart secure? How can I live in a way that I can have a conversation with a stranger and not immediately become defensive of my heart?
Just yet another step towards learning to love Love. And love is love sufficient unto love – and you can figure out the rest.