Relationship, Boundaries, & Everything in between.

Some of you have asked me why it took me so long to allow romance into my life. I don't know about you but for me my biggest fear is leaving the toxic home life to only end up in another. Growing up being the emotional anchor and the chaser of family and friends you learn early on that if family and platonic relationships hurt, romance hurts more. It's a quadruple threat.

One, you're allowing a stranger into your life.

Two, you're experiencing and possibly building life with them on a more intimate level.

Three, you start questioning if you have kids, will the damage to your kids be bigger than yours or not, because no one deserves to go through what you went through or even worse, even though it came with some incredibly powerful wisdom.

In addition to that, your partner and kids have to deal with the environment you grew up in because they're now with you. If you already don't want to deal with the environment you're in, why would you introduce an outsider to it?

The longer you stay in such an environment the more you learn to be protective by closing yourself off to the world. You're not only protecting yourself but your own potential.

I ran from romance fully until I was 23. It took me 5 years since then to truly open myself up to allow myself to live life at the surrender state I'm currently in today.

I had to dismantle my personal vow of solitude. A choice between solitude of independence or permanent monastery life. At one point of my life I had planned to get secretly ordained permanently but life just wouldn't let me, I had only the exception of just that one month back in 2022, which my team had initially told me was going to be 3 months total. Since then the more I have gotten to know myself, I realized that real monastery life isn't the right place for me either because of who I am. They'll probably kick me out the moment I start questioning their way of things and also because I just don't take myself seriously. I've recognized that my curiosity, wit, and humor are disruptive to the standardized definition of solitude. I am a walking, sharp, and vibrant missionary and comedian. My quietness comes when I'm focused but my livelihood appears when I'm just existing.

Regardless, my stubborn independence remained intact, and over the years, I can't even begin to unfold the many things life threw at me just to get me to dismantle this part of the vow. It was brutal. But, through this chapter of self love, after unlearning and cutting misalignment out, I learned that it's safe to receive love just by existing. That I deserve to be cared for and to receive nice things too, even if it's just nice words. It's acceptable.

My entire life I value connection and I took things at face value to remain platonic everywhere I go. I also grew up with a large male population so platonicity became my brother zone. If I don't have words to match action to then it's platonic, I don't assume otherwise. This is something I still practice in all areas of my life because it's transparent. There's no game and no guessing.

But as I've grown I've definitely learned to pull back a lot of my energies when it comes to how I approach people. It's not that I no longer care to check in on them. I've just learned to check in with myself first unless the nudge to check in on them is lingering for far too long or implying something else. It also doesn't mean that I stop valuing connection. I do but I have had to swallow the pill that not everyone is like me. I’ve learned to respect and to leave people where they want to be—whether it be transactional or completely out of my life. When I first started it was actually harder than I thought because I'm naturally a caring and curious yet direct person but I wouldn't trade the tranquility of my current mental space for anything else. In fact I look forward to expanding it.

That was what I did when I began learning how to love myself. It was hard. It's still a struggle at times. I'm still learning, just on a different level now, and honestly as much as I have always enjoyed solitude, my solitude has also never felt so lonely.

For some reason it just felt different on another level than before. But each time I return to solitude that expanded space of stillness has gotten so much more peaceful and for the first time my mind is actually quiet. It's not the kind of mindfulness where my mind is full and I'm just unbothered or trying to be unbothered but it's the kind where my mind is actually literally quiet. There's nothing on my mind. It feels like I'm looking into the void and I'm thinking to myself, "what should I think about?" Or, I'm looking at an empty space and wondering "What should I fill it with?"

As someone with a highly analytical mind there's nothing more agonizing than having to be still with nothing to analyze because it starts eating itself up. It's boredom on another level. You're not lazy. You're not pretending you have nothing to do. Your brain is literally looking at a blank canvas because it has run out of things to do so it just reloops itself and eventually the act of thinking itself becomes boring.

On the surface you feel like a student being put into a classroom just waiting for class to be over. People assume you're doing nothing to fix the mess in your life but mentally and physically it's a state of true exhaustion and surrender where you've already done all you could and there's nothing left to solve because the outcome is truly out of your control. You're forced to wait for the reveal. It feels normal, stagnant, yet different and brutal on all levels of existence. It's a cosmic house arrest where life feels backed up.

During survival mode you're running away from life and from yourself. During healing you're sitting with yourself. During cosmic house arrest you're owning your life internally but physically you're just mad at life because suddenly everything feels logically absurd. You're laughing because you see the logic in it but you're crying because it's painful to sit in it. In everyday life if you don't want to show up for things you can easily make an excuse but when it's truly out of your control you show up regardless—you no longer have a safety net.

People say you don't know who truly cares for you until you struggle. In such a state of forced solitude, you don't know who can truly tolerate you until you become nothing, even in the absence of toxicity. It's diminishing. You start questioning your own existence on a more profound level away from the standardized point of "Am I not worthy?" based on what you have to offer to "Is my existence that wrong?" because all you have left to offer is yourself.

It's a scary state to be in because you'll never know what will show up for you. You're winging every second of life as it reveals itself. My team fought me every time I tried to close my heart back up due to fear as each encounter forces my mental strength to expand beyond its current capacity.

As I began to step out of that forced stillness, I took this reflection a step further. I've been reviewing both my professional and personal code of ethics and really solidifying my boundaries. They are highly integrated. I realized that I shouldn't have to wait to catch up with someone at an event no matter how busy life is. I’ve also accepted that sometimes I may have thought I'm ready to reconnect with people on a digital level, only for me to conclude that what I actually value is socializing with people on a real level.

Maybe it's because I've been away from social media personally for so long that seeing people's personal updates actually shock my system. But on a more intimate level, in that discomfort, I recognized I don't actually belong there. Not to say that I don't value connections, I do—maybe too much—that I prefer to get updates directly from them through interaction than to just look at their photo albums or wait for their media updates to spark a conversation as I go on with my life. I'm not trying to lurk. We all deserve someone who truly sees us, not just what our day consists of.

To me, there is just a disconnection between getting to know them without actually doing the work of a true friend or family. And this is where my integrity comes in. It tells me that social media can allow us to be friends or family without doing the work of the true role we hold. There is nothing wrong with that. I'm probably just old school.

(Wow! Old school? 😂 Never thought I'd used that term on myself).

Think of it this way, just because you like someone doesn't automatically give you the right to act like you're their partner. Just because you are a friend doesn't automatically give you the right to invade their personal space. You don't just invite people into your house, you will want to trust them before you invite them in. You don't just introduce an old connection to your kids without trying to rebuild trust with that person first. Social media is like our personal digital living room. So I'm just thinking, if I don't even want to invite people into my living room and have them stay there 24/7 why would I want someone in my digital space 24/7, let alone be in their space 24/7. Because of this I finally concluded that I don't have a real reason to even have a personal social media account. Because, I'm not trying to lurk but I'm trying to genuinely build connections.

If it wasn't for these experiences I wouldn't have learned what I needed to learn. This is how I knew I was ready to build. This is how I know I'm caught up in life. This is how I knew my self love is starting to take root so I can truly thrive. It was pure brutality but it acted as a clean slate—allowing me to truly leave behind my old identities and close down the door to my old life—so I can build a much more authentic and aligned life. My boundaries have definitely gotten sharper, my capacity for depth has expanded, I feel much wiser, I’m still grateful for connection, and my tolerance for toxicity and anything illogical is now at zero, but I'm much more at peace with my life—especially when it comes to limiting second chances and just leaving quietly once I've already done what I can.

You may be reading this and thinking "Dang! She's a lot to handle." In any type of connection, especially partnership, you may think it sounds like I'm seeking perfection but it isn't. It's actually quite simple. I'm just looking for someone to exist with. Someone who is grounded and self aware enough to also reflect on themselves and grow. No one is perfect. We all have triggers and when we're already trying to survive at our maximum capacity our trigger results in protective reflexes but it doesn't mean toxicity. It just means we are at our limit and are in need of space to cool down so we can learn to correct our reflexes or draw back. True toxicity on the other hand is a choice. The choice to normalize the act of damage repeatedly because “I'm in charge,” “I pay for it,” “it's always been this way” or “this is just me.”

But at the end of the day the judgement is yours, only you know yourself best, who or what you're running from, and why you're the way you are. It's hard but a little honesty and willingness to change for the better goes a long way.

If you're one of the ones who values connection or is seeking love, I hope this helps provide a perspective on how you can navigate relationships in all its shapes or forms. Because, you too, deserve nice and genuine things. Just don't take it for granted. Once someone leaves your life willingly and quietly it's probably because they have already felt an accumulated realization that there is no genuine space in your life for who they are.

P.S.

To my family and friends who navigated these experiences with me, thank you. You guys are the real deal.