Isolation

"If you don't have boundaries, you raise barriers, and those eventually bring isolation."

This statement hit me like a truck. I began thinking about just how true that statement really is. I began thinking about several people that I know that became an island, a strange deserted island, because people could no longer reach them.

I remember one unmarried woman that lived in a single room shack. Her "home" was out on a secluded road which, even in the daytime, was dark with trees and bush. We went out there to visit her, she being a friend of the family and all. Actually we went there to fix something in her home. I didn't know anything about her at the time. I was very young. I do remember how she backed away from the door when we came and she looked down at the floor. Bach was playing so loud we had to ask that she turn it down so as to explain why we were there.

We explained we were there to fix her plumbing (at least I think that's what it was). She was hesitant, tentative, as if she didn't trust us. Maybe she didn't. She wrapped her sweater around her and shuffled off into the kitchen as we began work. I don't remember seeing her for the rest of the day. When we finished, we shouted over the music that we were leaving (she had turned up the volume). But she didn't return the goodbye. We left and closed the door behind us. Then I heard a "Goodbye" from behind me. When I turned around she was gone, the window curtain floated back into the house following her briefly and then curled back against the window and obscured the inside. She disappeared.

If we don't stand our ground when people attempt to control us, if we don't take time for ourselves when others demand our time, if we don't set boundaries that are clear to others, we will eventually become withdrawn, isolated, reclusive.

...dave
Schizophrenia is better than eating alone.