I’m pretty good at tracking my own emotional state.  Lots of practice and all that.  Today I was reminded what it looks like when people have messy boundaries.  Recently I have been talking with someone a fair bit and I made it clear over and over that I needed our interactions to happen entirely out of the sight of my children.  It’s someone I have sexual energy with and I don’t like having that around my kids.  It makes me uncomfortable.  An object was left at my house after the party last week.  It needed to be retrieved.

Specifically I was told someone would drop by sometime this week and grab it.  To speed that along I put said object in a bag and met this person at the door.  I was then asked if said person could come in.  There was a very understandable reason why said person wanted a rest period.

All of a sudden I am socially obligated, if I am a “friend” to have this person into my house.  Even though I have spent all day alternating between raging and crying.  I am not feeling comfortable in my skin.  I keep having the sensation of being trapped on a restraint table in a mental hospital, sure come right the fuck in.  No one did anything wrong, of course.  I could have said no after all.  It’s not like I would have seemed rude if I had said, “Uhm I’m a crazy person and this is a bad day.  Go away.”  I carefully manage going out of my house so I don’t lose it in public.

I make these boundaries clear with people in my life because I have to.  Because this is reality for me.  If I tell you that I don’t want to see you around my kids because it makes me uncomfortable what I mean is that I am going to spontaneously feel like I am about to vomit on the floor because I feel so completely uncomfortable with the fact that one of my lovers is being chummy with my kids.  That’s what my sister’s lovers did.  Right before they asked to fuck me.  I can’t turn it off in my head.  I can’t.  This is my fucking boundary and I god damn get to have it.

And when you were asked, “Was there anything else” and you say in that studiously soft and bedroomy voice… “There is one question I want to ask… but probably not in front of the littles” oh my fucking god.  That is why I told you I didn’t want you in my house with my children.  You just made a god damn allusion to my transgressive sex life in front of my kids.  I should be ok with this, right?  That’s the theory in Harmful to Minors at least.  But I’m not ok.  That fucking bothers me.  That’s not right.  Was it obviously over the line?  Of course not.  But it was skirting the edge of the line.  That was pointing at the edge of the line and saying, “Can I move it back just an inch?  It’s only an inch.  An inch doesn’t matter.”

I don’t fucking think so.