Nobody will beat you

Two months ago, I met a girl, a friend of a friend, who looked me straight in the eye and told me, I don’t like you.

I’ll start from the beginning. This girl like I mentioned earlier, is someone I met through a close friend of mine and that was our third time meeting. We were at a party and she was with that friend when I walked over to talk about the color theme slumber party I was throwing for my birthday. So after the trivial gist about it- was I the one choosing or do people get to pick, choosing the color scheme and making sure to water down the drinks.

I go to the girl, “Hey, you’re coming right?” because I automatically assumed she, being a mutual of a mutual, was my mutual also. But she goes, “No, I’ll not be making it.”

So I go, “Awwn, why?” That was when she looked me in the eye and went. “I don’t like you enough to go to something that intimate. I’m not your friend and I don’t want to be.”

The shock on my face. I look at my friend, who has an apologetic look but doesn’t seem surprised, and back to the girl who has continued sipping her drink like nothing happened. “Oh.” I say because I have nothing. Imagine. Me, speechless.

She looks at me, “Don’t take it personal. It’s just me. I have met you enough to decide that our vibes don’t click enough to be friends. You’re someone I know, not my friend. It’s not like I hate you or something. I honestly have no beef with you.” Then she smiles and walks off and I’ll not say I was not, because I was massively stunned.

When I finally got my footing, my first instinct was to automatically dislike her. How dare she? I’m lovable, everyone loves me. I wanted to go after her and force my friendship on her to prove a baseless point. But that was what 2019 me would have done. This me, has healed from so many self esteem issues so I just take a deep breath then realize, that she was just someone with well set boundaries.

I was suddenly reminded of high school and a girl in my class. I’ll call her Fina. Fina got voted the most hated girl and snob of the class each year because of a statement she made one time in SS1. “I choose my friends.” Now that I think of it, I don’t understand why that triggered us so much. Maybe it was because our 12-13 years old minds did not understand what were boundaries and the fact that she was one of the richest, prettiest and smartest girls in class, coupled with the fact that the friends she chose were either, rich, good looking or smart, did not do much to make her not look proud. So to everyone, asides her three friends, she was a condescending witch *insert other word here.

But 6 years later and I stumble on Fina’s social media and she is still with these same set of people, and is living her best life. You might say obviously, people don’t post the sad parts on social media but I can tell that Fina really is living her most unproblematic self. And I realize she figured out her boundaries earlier and boy, was I jealous of that. She knew the kind of energy she wanted around her and simply the rest of us didn’t cut it. But she never told us that. She did not say, after being asked why she doesn’t relate with the rest of the class, “I choose my friends and the rest of you simply don’t cut it”. She was actually nice to whoever crossed her path but you never got close to her personal space except she let you. Boundaries. Then there was us, still figuring out our teenage hood changing friends every term and being in each other’s business. In the same amount of time that I stumbled on her social media, many of us do not even speak anymore and will never see each other till we die.

That is why boundaries are important. It is simply putting you first because in life people come and go what will be left at the end of the day, is you. The importance of boundaries is not talked about enough that’s why we keep chasing all these ships- relationships and friendships- that do us no good but waste our time and energy. Well, I’m here to tell you this. Set your boundaries, nobody will beat you. Even if they do, they can’t kill you, even if they do, they can’t stop your ghost from haunting them. And we all know nobody is even going through the first step. Last last, they won’t like it and I can tell you, it sucked to not feel liked enough, but at least I got one less friendship to keep up with because when I thought about it, I invited her just because I didn’t want to be rude when I would not even care if she came or not. So I’m thankful for her, giving me a wake up call to strengthen my boundaries because honestly all people do is take and drain your time and energy. So I’m choosing to have the right people to drain me from now on. Setting boundaries, having standards.

Like Fina, who knew early on the type of people she wanted around her, people on the same category with her, people who would not feel like everything with her is a competition, people who she would not need to lend money to every time at lunch, people who wouldn’t stress her in the exam hall for answers. Smart girl no wonder she got into MIT that same year. Maybe she was one of those people that seem to have good chi and just have life fall into place for her, maybe she was just lucky enough to be educated about it early enough. Either ways, she had boundaries and she let us know about them. It hurt and all we could do was say hurtful things about her but trust, we couldn’t beat her.

So set your boundaries today let us all rest from your breakfast and fear people agenda on the TL. It is very hard I know. Especially if you’ve been conformed to these boundless relationships for a long time. Just getting up one day to say no I don’t want this anymore or this makes me uncomfortable, to practices and habits you’ve let slide for so long would be darn hard. But I promise, the peace that comes afterwards makes that awkwardness that must eventually pass, worth it. There are always going to be problematic people, no doubt, but setting the right boundaries, they can’t enter your peace. For real.

Shalom.