Back Off, You!

What IS this thing called boundaries? Where can I get some?

My therapist leaned forward a little bit in her chair, but not too close, as she explained her special strategy to me. It consists of always wearing an imaginary hula hoop around my waist. Really? Yes. I wear the hoop to help me remember where I begin and end, and where other people start. My very own perimeter, a boundary. Of course, this works even better if the person I’m interacting with is sporting a hoop of their own and embraces the concept of personal space. That would put four to six feet of separation between us. Four to six feet? That’s like the Grand Canyon of personal space for me. A vast expanse, indeed. I had no experience of that kind of space growing up, physically or emotionally.

My hula hoop can be any color I choose; it can be made of imaginary wood, metal, or plastic, or I could have one made of a sparkly colorful ether that’s suspended around me, always hovering at the ready to keep people from getting inappropriately close. It’s completely weightless and serves as an invisible line that no one can cross without my permission. The hula hoop is my sacred bodyguard.

Of course, the hula hoop is a metaphor and applies not only to physical space but also to how much we divulge, and how much we hold back, and how much we allow in. I’ll only be addressing physical space today. The emotional piece will be addressed at another time. I want to ease you in. If I’m divulging too much, my sincerest apologies. This is a learning curve, and I have a tendency to overshare.

Welcome to my life.

One therapist after another has tried to explain boundaries to me in a way that I could understand. What do you mean, people are allowed to have some space of their own?

Boundaries were a foreign concept for me, but in 1994, my eyes were opened by an unlikely substitute for the wisdom found in a more traditional form of therapy. I needed to hear it from the experts. It was a “don’t do what I do” example. My teachers? The characters on the TV show, Seinfeld.

I was never a fan because I found the whole show entirely too mean. Not one person had healthy boundaries, but there was one episode of the handful I’d seen that made me laugh. In it, Elaine introduces her new boyfriend Aaron to Jerry’s parents. Jerry forewarns them that Aaron is “a bit of a close talker.” Absolute understatement. Aaron got in people’s faces. We’re talking 2 or 3 inches at most.

Did Aaron know my mother?

Before I go on––and I do go on––please let this serve as a mild warning to any squeamish readers:

In order to properly describe my family’s lack of boundaries, I have to get specific. I’ll only use my words; there will be no accompanying photographs or diagrams. I’ll spare you the details that no one should hear about ever; except for my therapist. She knows it all.

I’ll start with a somewhat benign (but disgusting) example, as a warm-up. I’m told it’s familiar to many of us who had perfectionist parents.

I’ll give you a clue. It’s a clean-up job. It involves saliva that isn’t yours. Ah, you know what I’m talking about, don’t you? The on-the-spot face bath. Absolutely no water needed, because all mom required was spit and a Kleenex. Notice that I didn’t say the Kleenex needs to be clean.

SCENE 1: Little Nan with a dripping chocolate ice cream cone.

[Camera moves in for a close-up]

Messy, right? Mom comes to the rescue, with an old, crumpled, probably pre-used tissue she plucked from her purse or her sleeve. She wets it with her spit and rubs it all over Little Nan’s face. When she didn’t have a tissue, she’d lick her thumb and have her way with my sticky, smudged cheeks.

Gross, but not too appalling. Or is it? I may have lost perspective since many things were normalized in my childhood that weren’t normal at all.

SCENE 2: Teenage Nan is trapped in her mother’s bathroom, again.

[Camera moves out for a long shot]

“Ooooooh! I see another blackhead! It’s a really good one!” my mother thrills.

A good blackhead? Is that possible?

“NO! No more, it hurts.” I whine back, pleading for a break.

“Oh, come on, it’s so big, let me get it, I can’t resist. It’s ready to pop! It just needs a little help.”

After some more obligatory objections, it was easier for me to let her do it than to keep fighting her off. And there was a part of me that wanted to please her, to be in on it. I wanted to make her happy, but I hated every moment of her compulsive need to fix me.

But with that, came the hope that if I let her do it one more time, I’d look better, I’d be better, and she’d love me more. I would magically become the showcase daughter she had in mind. The pimples and blackheads would spontaneously disappear once and for all, if we did it one more time. And this time, there wouldn’t be scabs, my imperfections would go “poof!” and I’d suddenly have a flawless complexion. Peaches and cream.

No more scrubbing with Noxzema or countless dots of Clearasil amplifying my reality for all to see. No more trips to the dermatologist for medications that didn’t help at all. No more little metal implements that my mother would discover at the drugstore. She’d race home with her newest toy and demonstrate how to use it, so I could pick up the slack if she was unavailable for my next procedure.

When she was doing it, she’d zero in on me, no tools necessary, except for her sharp thumbnails coming in for the kill. Of course, at 14 years old, the available supply of targets was limitless. The extractions could get very time-consuming.

In addition to her DIY dermatology skills, she was also a champion tweezer.

“Nancy, you have the most beautiful eyebrows. They’re so thick and they’re perfectly arched, but you have to let me clean them up for you. You have a lot of stray hairs, especially in the space between them.”

We’re not talking Frida Kahlo unibrow here. I was just a teenager who was doing the sometimes dirty and always uncomfortable work of growing up.

She’d go on, “I wish I had your eyebrows, then I wouldn’t have to pencil mine in every day.”

“Wha-what happened to your eyebrows, Mom?” I asked only once.

“Oh, I over-tweezed. They all disappeared.” So, logically, she could make mine disappear, too. I liked my eyebrows. I still do. My mother’s brows went AWOL, years ago.

If only I had that hula hoop my therapist told me about back when I was a kid.

Oh, wait. I did have a hula hoop. But I didn’t have the wiggle to make it work. And that hula hoop was real, not a metaphor at all. I needed the metaphor more than I needed to wiggle.

I needed some fucking space. There was too much touching, fixing, adjusting, pinching, squeezing, tweezing, and sliming.

Instead of turning away from compulsive behaviors as a result of her ministrations, I inherited the ones she brought to our beauty dates. I became a picker, too. A scrutinizer, a nervous wreck. I even tweezed, but never to the same extremes. My eyebrows are intact. There’s always something to fix. And I know, rationally, that squeezing that zit one more time won’t make anything better, and it hurts. But that doesn’t stop me. It’s a hard habit to break, this obsession that’s plagued me for years. I still break out from time to time. And the hairs? Now they pop up in places they shouldn’t pop up in. Welcome to my life as a post-menopausal 64-year-old woman.

In my family, personal space wasn’t available, and I learned what I lived. As I became an adult, I started to impose myself on others, my lack of boundaries showing through. I’m loath to admit it, but I became a bit of a close talker, too. Not as close as Aaron, but I placed myself inside other people’s hoops without permission. I’ve also been a spontaneous toucher. Uninvited bear hugs and pats on people’s arms, only. I’m not that bad. But for many, that amount of touch is too much touch. I’ve even been known to liberate a few blackheads here and there; ones that didn’t belong to me.

Had my mother and I been more enterprising and enjoyed each other’s company more, we could have harnessed our skills and created a skincare empire called “Nan & Diane’s Pick and Pluck––Zap Those Zits!” Satisfaction guaranteed. Free hoop with every purchase of a 10-session package. You’re gonna need it!

My therapist’s theory is that when I fuss with myself, it’s because I want to feel something, even if it’s painful. I’m not sure I agree, but I don’t have a better answer for it, besides trying to chase an unattainable form of perfection and an intense desire to be in control of everything I encounter. It also might just be repetition compulsion powered by magical thinking. All of these ideas hold value for me. The most important thing is my awareness of the behaviors.

These days, as I come to understand myself more, I’m learning to keep to my side of the street. I’m more mindful of the people around me and respectful of individual needs. And I never leave my house without my hula hoop. I’ve decided that I require a full wardrobe of hoop choices. Some casual, some dressy, in a variety of materials and colors.

Wearing the same hula hoop all the time is not how I roll––or wiggle––these days!

This, if you’ve never seen it before is something no one should miss. Especially if you love the diva who is Grace Jones. She’ll show you how it’s done. Phenomenal!

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