When I think about borders, I don’t think of them in terms of aggression. They’re more modeled after Northern Ireland’s border with the U.K. (Pre-Brexit)— more of an administrative division about who I should acknowledge and who I don’t, but people are generally free to move between sides.

I love being kind. Making people feel respected and loved is my jam! It’s the reason I want to get out of bed in the morning!

But it’s been abused time and again. Kindness takes labor, and deep kindness for a person takes labor over years and decades.

When a person crosses one of my boundaries and lies about it, falsely blaming someone else or me to escape accountability for their misdeed, they’ve placed themselves outside my borders and they’ve built the wall.

Plain and simple.

Dealing with an interpersonal lie is the definition of a power struggle — who’s version of reality triumphs another’s. I am too busy for those power games. I am focusing on my career and my marriage first and foremost, and I’m well past being kind to people who don’t repay the favor.

My new friend A—, who is a Mexican Gay man, and I talk about this a lot.

How, we as kind people, don’t have to be rude or mean to the people who expect things from us we don’t consent to. We can just require them to do more work to get what they want. We use our body language and the narratives we craft in conversations to make those people second guess themselves. To really say what they mean before they can advance the conversation. The kind of people I’m talking about are usually those with colonial identities to us, who have historically felt emboldened to push their personal agendas based solely on their social station.

My new life motto:

Withhold Withhold Withhold!

They must speak clearly if they want something from me, specifically. They must expressly articulate the reasons they want my help in that pursuit. Never again can the unspoken implication be “You and your time are worth less than me and mine.”

And you best bet I make sure every new person is transparent with me ~before~ investing in them, because I can only ever again give kindness for repayment of the same.

If truth is their vulnerability, then they have to get vulnerable to dance with me

Because I’m just too busy doing my own thing finally

and I’d prefer not to slow down 💃

#Lent #ClarityIsKindness #BordersAndBoundaries #AcceptOnlyReciprocity #WeAreTheGatekeepers #TruthToPower #PowerToTruth