Givers need boundaries because takers don’t have any
My job is exhausting. Mentally, I have done more in the past 6 weeks than in the past year… Yet there is so much more to do. Why? Because everything is due yesterday. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time to plant a tree is today as the saying goes. We’re trying to grow, scale, and thrive at the same time. This week has been particularly stressful. I look at my goals, and simply getting dinner is too much of a stretch these days. Everything needs to be pre-cooked or it isn’t being eaten. I’m dispensing with dinner going forward. I don’t need it because I eat damn well at work, and so there’s no need… Also I don’t have the strength for washing up afterwards. Self care is going downhill… All my energy is focused on getting maximum sleep/time in bed because my back pain is intense. There’s things I can do if I plan myself. And therefore should do. I’m a big girl now and quite literally there is no one looking after me. My dad is gone, he used to do things like gardening. My mum loves me, but is also trying to make a life for herself after the massive crater in our lives. I have exams, they need 20 hours a week.
I have languages to learn, even books to read, I am currently incapable. Why? Tiredness. Work gets every ounce of me and it’s not healthy. I need more energy, need more boundaries, need work to be less of a struggle. There’s no milk, sugar? I buy it for the entire office. Why? I don’t have strength to get annoyed and go without. I need stuff done now too and I need to be on my A game. My A game involves tea. Lots of it. I draw the line at kitchen towels etc… I’m a baller, not a mum.
My boss ate my last bagel in front of me. I was toasting a bagel, there was one left. My boss walks in, gets a bagel and toasts it after me. I thought to myself. “Oh look, we eat the same bagel” of course we do. It was my bagel. He didn’t ask if it was a “communal bagel” (there is no such thing) and just ate it. It was mine. I feel like that is an apt metaphor for my current life. I didn’t realise I had been robbed until I got back to my desk.
But I’m a giver. I need boundaries. This week has been one of allowing the lunatics to run the asylum. Today is Friday and the big girl is back in charge.
Also. This girl needs to chill the fuck out, I was ready to go for the throat of someone this week because they didn’t prevent a minuscule problem that isn’t their job while I was fighting a full war against stupidity. That’s what happens when you don’t chill. You start to bleed on people who didn’t cut you.
Grace and courage
Annetta Mother Smith