Boundaries

I don’t have boundary issues. I repressed my sexuality almost entirely when I was fourteen because of what two abusers were doing to me. It emerged for a while but is repressed again after the way she reacted. My sexuality has been damaged enough. When I run quickly behind people, this is because my back is giving out and I am looking, subconsciously, for something to brace myself. It’s an instinct. But it’s more of a physical difficulty than a boundary difficulty. I have barely ever collided with anyone. I am in control. Please don’t intentionally stand close to me when I am struggling like this. Just when I am caught off guard, when I have been seated for a while, when I am nervous or excited, my muscles become rigid. When someone is seated and I sit next to them, sometimes I come close to them to sit. Like if they’re across from me, my head will come close to them as I lower myself into the chair. The reason for this is because my legs, hips and core are extremely tight and do not allow me to gently lower myself all of the time. This is the reason I usually grab the seat on which I am sitting with an arm and lower myself from the side. If I do have a few boundary issues, it’s only because in my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, my boundaries were smashed almost hourly. It’s a miracle I am the man I am today. Again, the reason I lean forward when I stand, is because my legs are not strong enough to lift me. The reason I rock when standing is because my hips are tight because of atrophy and spasticity. I can imagine that these things may seem like I am trying to touch others when I am close to them, like in Mass or on the bus. I guarantee you that is foolishness. I have difficulty standing still. 

Can I ask a serious, albeit, weird question: Why do people at church think I am always sniffing people’s behinds? It is really, terribly weird and it is making me dreadfully uncomfortable. I have spent the past six years trying to adjust the way I stand up when people are seated in front of me. I try to turn my head 90 degrees so as to make it blatant that this I am not doing. I have even had to deal with people sitting behind me in church and overtly sticking their own noses into my behind. Guys, it’s terribly weird. How did you get this in your minds’? Maybe once, I inhaled deeply while standing at church. To explain: in the beginning months of winter, my asthma flares up. Because my legs are weak, I sometimes propel myself forward to gain momentum to stand. Because of the pressure this places on my diaphragm, I guess I breathe deeply when standing. Another reason is because I am trying to watch what others are doing. I don't want to sit and get a face full of someone's butt. Just trying to be attentive to others. Guys, I am dreadfully sorry that you got this impression. Even more sorry that it has carried on this long. My goodness.  

I could go on for hours. After all, it is the reason I have to continue saving documents in my private computer. In reading St Faustina’s Diary, I am beginning to recognize that when people are unjustly suspicious of you or when you are unjustly accused, it is like a crown of suffering that the Lord will adorn on you. Again, God will corroborate my exceptional character. Maybe I should have more faith. I wish I knew the reason you keep forgetting. I trust in God’s redeeming power. His justice, His vindication, when He redeems me, it will be so much better than anything I could say.

If you think I am controlling, you are forgetting the man I have been for the past five years. I’ll admit, I possess the capacity for narcissism. As do you. As does even the healthiest amongst us. I don’t have narcissism. I have cPTSD and DID. I have only over the past couple weeks begun exploring assertiveness. I am just realizing how much people have taken advantage of me over the past ten, fifteen, twenty years. Excluding my childhood, which were chains. You have seen Sound of Freedom. Not every child gets saved from these experiences. While I was lucky enough to have lived, I have never gotten the support I needed for the sex trafficking and worse that I have endured. I’ve been walked over, like a doormat since I was born. I am learning to develop healthy boundaries. You’re just becoming estranged to the emotional impact of what I have endured. The trauma of my childhood seemed, in a manner of absurd cosmic irony, to have made me the perpetual target of bullies as I got older. Treat me how you please. God sees my true nature. And I trust Him to reveal this to you. A lot of it is just misunderstanding. I am not staring people down. The reason I look at people is because I am trying to discern their intentions. I am trying to get an understanding about how people are feeling about me. That way, I know which personality to adopt to defend myself from being hurt. You say I am controlling. What you don’t see is the fact that I have been controlled literally like a ritual slave survivor since my birth. It’s not an excuse to have bad behavior. I am just learning to be assertive. I will not apologize for trying to set boundaries. For asking people without walking assistance to offer me their seat. I have often heard that when people begin to set boundaries, others will become agitated. This agitation might not have anything to do with the person setting boundaries. Do people actually expect me to roll over and accept these blatant, criminal intrusions of my privacy? The priesthood violating privacy is the gravest offence. No, people just want to feel better and justified about how they treated me. Maybe I wasn’t even really controlling with my abusers. Instead, maybe I was just trying to learn and practice the God given virtue of meekness, which is assertiveness. No, no matter how I treated them, it doesn’t compare with what they did to form me. I was a baby. When the memories of what they were doing to me were suppressed, even while this abuse of theirs was still going on, I couldn’t articulate the injustice. Because my mind would shut down to it. It did not mean the injustice was not still happening. It did not mitigate the effects of their treatment. I didn’t have anything to do with the emotions. It vented in other ways. Because it was not safe to feel or express it.