I will admit, I used to think that the concept of boundaries was stupid. I hated them. Why should you have to curb your actions and your fun? I mean, who really wants to have less fun? I didn’t understand why I couldn’t go out at 11 p.m. on a school night or go play a giant game of cops and robbers all over the city in the middle of the night with my friends.
The thing that I didn’t understand was that giving yourself boundaries actually helps you have more fun. What? That’s crazy! No, it actually makes sense.
My mom used to always tell me that life is like the Grand Canyon. If you didn’t have a guardrail there, you might not pay attention and walk right off the edge of the cliff. Boundaries are like guardrails. Once you have them in place, if you hop over it, you know you’re in danger of falling off the edge. That’s why it’s important to place them far enough back.
My angst-filled teen-self used to roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” I’d say, not fully realizing how great this advice actually was. See, my mom has this tendency to know me better than myself sometimes, so she saw that every piece of me was waiting to run around wild like a puppy who managed to get past the gate.
Naturally, when I got to college, that’s exactly how I felt. Taking spontaneous trips to the city late at night just for doughnuts was actually an option. All-nighters with friends in the middle of the school week were almost normal.
I could eat whatever I wanted (ahem, hello budding goldfish cracker addiction), I could go wherever I wanted, I could do whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted to. Fantastic! Right? Wrong. I was completely miserable. I was more depressed during that first year than ever before.
Sure, part of that was because I had to learn how to properly grieve the loss of a loved one, but the rest of it was because I had thrown out all of my boundaries, so I had no sense of stability for myself. I couldn’t trust myself to get all my homework done and be responsible enough to know when to say no to a 3 a.m. Harry Potter marathon.
I got to the point where I didn’t even want to try anymore. I was constantly sleep deprived and filling myself with junk food and energy drinks to make up for it, and that really didn’t do any good for how I was feeling either.
I decided that being a floating ball of tangled up confusion and stress wasn’t for me any longer. I had bulldozed right over my guard rail and experienced the feeling of falling down into the Grand Canyon. Luckily, even though I didn’t realize it, I had a parachute on that I was able to pull the cord on just before I hit the ground. That parachute was my mother, opening her arms to me while shaking her head wondering why on earth I would ever do something like that to myself.
I love boundaries. They keep me sane, healthy and safe. So for now at least, I’m perfectly comfortable staring out into the big huge chasm of life from behind my safety rail.
