Sometimes anti-climactically easy. I said, “We need to have a talk. I’m feeling very emotionally flooded after each visit and I spend a solid week processing with about five different people. This can’t continue.”

“So you want me less or not at all?”

“No.”

*complete shock*

“Let’s try boundaries first before going to the shunning step.”

“Ok! Let’s do that! Which boundaries where? Oh, and let’s add this other boundary.”

“And I’m still pissy about Christmas. My feelings were very hurt.”

“You know… I wondered day of if I had stepped in something and I wasn’t sure and I hesitated to bring it up–thanks for telling me. I’m really sorry. That wasn’t cool.”

Ok, technically it involved slightly more sentences but it was about that simple. The visit last night was nice. We talked about a variety of non-threatening/non-triggering topics and enjoyed one anothers company.

We are all lonely. Sometimes being around people means learning which things not to talk about on which days with which people. The other option is being alone. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t really want to make my friends be alone just because they have a hard time intuiting which topics are “sensitive” for me. I’m hard to read. On purpose. It isn’t fair to expect people to notice.

I’m crossing my fingers. I genuinely believe that it is good for me and my kids to get to know very different kinds of people and we need to figure out how to have our own boundaries with them. Rejecting people who have poor ability to intuit social boundaries is not helpful on the path to learning how to better communicate boundaries.

Also, this story hurts my heart. I wish people had cared about me like this when I was twelve instead of thinking I deserved the 25 year old drug dealers.