This post is part of a series I’m writing from mid-June to mid-November 2024, on things that helped me rebuild my confidence, sense of self, and increased my delight in my life after massive difficulty in multiple areas. For full details and post links to all 110 things, go to this post here.
Tip #24 - Take your space
I have a friend that’s really cool.
Our friendship is really cool too and really important to me.
Sometimes we just hang and talk, sometimes we don’t see each other for a long time, sometimes we’ll exchange memes or songs. Sometimes when we hang out we’ll watch stupid movies I haven’t seen, and listen to music and eat good food we’ve gotten or make it ourselves and just talk. Catch up on our lives, that are very very separate and opposite from each other.
It’s unique.
We know each other really well. We’ve talked through a lot of things together. Relationships, our individual careers, and loads of personal issues. Traumas and dreams and failures and shit. Cried and laughed and asked for advice and given it, listened and talked and felt surrounded by respect - a genuine desire for good things for each other. Comfort too. The honest call out and the genuine compliment.
I hope you have a friend like this like I do. It’s relatively new to me and it’s incredible.
Anyway.
One time this friend and I were hanging out and had had a drink or two, and we were turning the music up that we’d blasted from my tv in order to fully immerse ourselves in the sound. I don’t remember what I did or said but I indicated somehow either in body language or verbally that I was worried of the neighbors hearing me, hearing the music, or something.
He was like, “you do that a lot…did you know that? What are you so worried about, that they’ll know you’re alive? This space is yours, you’re allowed to be alive here and to live here the way you want. Is it in your lease to keep the volume below 30?”
I shook my head grinning, no.
“Damn right, that would be crazy. You’re allowed to live in your life. You’re allowed to take this space - it’s already yours.”
I giggled, and we turned it up as loud as it could go.
I think about this moment a lot. A couple times a week at least.
My entire life the solution to things was to be less. Less of a problem, less of a need, less questions, fewer issues, no back talk, no challenging the rules or the rule makers at home or at church or in life.
Small was good. Take up little space, leave no trace, do nothing that would be noticeable because that might disrupt someone else. Wouldn’t want to run into their life with mine, so put mine away. Accommodate the needs of others over everything. Be small be quiet be good say yes be still keep waiting. Raise your hand wait to talk until it’s your turn don’t disturb anyone.
This is hard to undo.
But I don’t think the solution to anything much is “become smaller”. I think the opposite is true. Expansion is the secret to feeling content and at peace and being able to live.
When you breathe you fill your lungs with air. Your rib cage expands. You grow from child to adult and take up more space and more space and require more space for your life and your lungs.
It is hard when you’ve been raised to know that the best solution is to be small and accommodating. When you’re taught that gods always watching always judging always keeping track so you have to keep up and that the solution is in shrinking when the solution to nothing at all is a shrinking.
One thing I know for sure is that the solution to most things of a soul sickness from trauma or deep deep hurt, the solution to that type of stuff is expansion.
Strength.
Unyielding firmness grown out the heart of you and rooted out into the earth by the soles of your feet. The solution is a bigger-ing. A solidness. A confidence in your own reality.
This costs things. To get your elbow room back and to start using it. People who are used to using your space and your flexibility and depending on you unfairly will not like it. It will feel bad because you’re not used to it and it feels bad when people express dislike about your choices and those types of people will try to make you feel bad about it and that sucks too…change is hard for everyone.
Taking your space also means - again - to put boundaries - to say yes I’m keeping this time for myself, I’ll catch you out there some other time. Or also can look like saying yes to better things, as discussed, or saying no and not needing to elaborate.
This is why we audited our peace, so you can figure out what boundaries you need to put up to keep it, and know how much elbow room you need for your soul to have a deep breath and turn the volume up as much as you want to…to spread out the facts of your life and the specifics of your desires so you have time to evaluate and accept and decide things and hear yourself and you can know that nobody’s going to swirl it around or be in your space again without your permission.
You’re entitled to space to enjoy, build, live, protect, and learn your own life.
Ilysm - Marian.