On Boundaries

How are you setting them? What others are you aiming for?

As we go into various holidays, I’ve been thinking a lot about setting boundaries. I have already set some, and they feel really good and solid to me, like I’m on my own side. I am already very fond and proud of these little boundaries that now have grown on their own like houseplants. And there will be more to come. (And yes, this is about politics and Very Very Bad Decisions.)

In the moment where something is happening, boundaries can be hard for me, as a people-pleaser and a muller. Sometimes I am struck with indecision and also with shock: Did you say that? With no regard to who is listening? And then things sort of spool outward, with more words, and I’m more stunned and overwhelmed, and the a third track in my mind is occupied with larger existential questions like, “How did we get here, to this place?” and “Who are you?” and “Do you see other people?” I attempt to comprehend the moment that will not make sense, that really doesn’t have any sense in it.

Brewster Pond, not far from our house, where there’s often an egret hanging out.

Once I’m mad about something, I’m fine. I trust myself completely. It’s at the beginning, in the space of the first second, that I have a problem, because I want to suppress my fear and anxiety response to “smile” in every situation and then to dissociate. My boundary-setting, as a skill, is all over the place. Sometimes I freeze, and sometimes I explode. Sometimes “That’s fucked up” just falls out of my mouth.

My goal now is not to do a throw-down mosh-pit Battle Royale but instead to stop my involvement immediately, disengage, and leave the room. (Ideally I’d like to say something smart and leave, but really—that is wishful thinking for me.) My bar for this to happen, at this point in late-USA, is very very low. I might need to practice a drill of pushing back from the table, taking a breath, standing up, and turning to walk away.

It could be a dance: Push, Breathe, Stand, Turn. Push, Breathe, Stand, Turn.

I’ve also long admired friends and internet videos of strangers with the face and voice control to set boundaries with small gestures and words:

Oh! You said that!

That was a choice.

Ahhhhh, no.

Look at you.

I don’t have muscle memory for these kinds of movements. Instead, I get into it, and I’ve yelled myself hoarse. I have bingo face rather than poker face. I have no chill. I live and die by the exclamation point and the heart emoji.

One skill I did develop last year was to say, “I need five minutes,” and then to get up and go lay down somewhere by myself. The hilarious thing I realized—and why did it take me 53 years to learn this??—was that it didn’t have to be a five-minute break. You can say you’re taking five minutes and then take an hour, or go drive away! Nobody cares!

As many smart people have said, we are long past the point of convincing anyone. I’m 100-percent clear that we are dealing with a a major departure from common ground, discussion, or a shared reality.

I’m also thinking about boundaries in my day-to-day life that are very different than 2016. I’ve made a pretty firm rule of not checking or staying on social media after 7 pm, though I sometimes slip. But I swear in 2016 I was on Twitter just staring in horror through most evenings. I think witnessing is very important, but I’m going to allocate that to the daytime, when I have something to do with the horror, like talk to someone, or hug my dog, or go for a walk.

I’ve turned off almost all alerts on my phone for all of the apps and news sources. I just don’t want my narrow slips of peace or focus to be disrupted by any notification. And I swear I hate the phrase “breaking news” because all it makes me think about is that yes, it’s news of the Breaking. News is broken, and so much more is about to break. Or maybe not. But some things will absolutely, definitely, break.

And I gotta say, it’s been amazing on BlueSky these past few weeks as waves of people come in from the Dead Bird. The ethic and programming of BlueSky has a major block function, so it is possible to completely eliminate MAGA from your timeline. Red people are wringing their hands and getting angry that they don’t have anyone to bully, and saying “Oh it’s an echo chamber” but it’s not. It’s a source of life, of decent, civilized conversation and information, in a country where that is in short supply. It’s okay and even necessary to have things just for ourselves. And if any MAGA wants to just lurk, they might see the beautiful thing that is free discourse and curiosity: people posting about epidemiology, about books, posting their pets and paintings, not making jokes not at the expense of a targeted group. People can lurk, maybe, and absorb a bit of that peace themselves. And I think that’s good, that it’s there.

Another thing—and this may be tiny and petty—but I won’t read a news clip attached to a photo with the faces of him or his goons. There are other sources to get news, and the same story will be in seven different formats. I don’t need to look at the face that’s about to set to the work of destruction.

My peace, this time around, is all I have. And that doesn’t mean that I won’t be active, because I hope to be. But no matter what we do to resist, we need moments of quiet in which to recover. Rage is empty calories. Rage is not enough. And we need to stay healthy.

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One other helpful boundary thing:

Getting AI Out of My Life: I’ve been so mad that I can’t Google things anymore without generating AI content, which has real environmental impact and is so wasteful. Also I like human content! So I started exploring other search engines, and people recommended a few on Bluesky. On the basis of those recommendation, I put Ecosia, an alternative to Google search, on my phone, which has some or other environmental benefit, and it’s simple enough for the phone and gets the job done. I think hid the Google search from my main screen, and Ecosia is nice because it just has less clutter. One unintended consequence for my sanity is that, when I opened Google on my phone, I would get suggestions of news links, and I don’t like those either—it’s distraction and brain noise. So Ecosia has made my head-space less grim in two ways!

Other search engines recommended were DuckDuckGo, which is free, and Kagi, which I think has a monthly fee. Kagi has a page that explains what the costs of “free” searching is, including all the data that’s collected and the advertising, and I found that compelling but haven’t made the leap yet. Someone else said that if you use Google search but put “search term -ai” it will eliminate the AI, but I haven’t tried that yet, and also that’s annoying to have to do that.

Every moment of peace we steal is a victory from those who want to harm us. How are you protecting moments of peace? How are you setting boundaries?