Toast It So

That’s from a poem by Robert Frost, I think. Most of the people who lived where I lived when I was growing up knew that. I have since learned that the world is very large, and that most people don’t live in the community that I grew up in. That I learned to live in. In fact, the people who live in the geographical area that I learned to live in don’t even live in the community that I grew up in. So much has changed.

Growing up is learning how to live.

Simply living makes you a neighbor, at least in our current understanding and definition of the word.

Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more

neigh·bor

/ˈnābər/

noun

1. a person living near or next door to the speaker or person referred to.”our garden was the envy of the neighbors”

verb

1. (of a place or thing) be situated next to or very near (another).”the square neighbors the old quarter of the town”

Sorry, I assumed you’re a person. Only people read. Unless you’re a bot, but in that case you don’t “care”. Right?

Anyway.

This is a post about the importance of personal boundaries, and understanding that the “fences” referenced in the poem is really a metaphor for personal boundaries.

Childhood Sexual Absue impacts a person’s understanding of agency, and therefore the concept of personal boundaries is obliterated. When you have no control, you are unable to establish any sort of limit or perimeter. That’s the name of the game.

But you don’t actually know which game you are playing. And so you start looking for the limits, without even understanding what limits are.

And then, if you’re lucky, you “wake-up” one day and realize that you’ve been playing a different game, the wrong game, the entire time.

There’s nothing original hear in the thinking- though the grouping of the words is hopefully unique. But the sensation of awareness borders on the numinous, so that’s enough for me to admit that maybe, just maybe, I’ve been wrong about my ability to build fences of my own. Finally.