I am known for cutting people out of my life. That’s because it’s an external response, sometimes a very public one.
What isn’t known is the months or even years of internal response, the patience, the multiple second chances, the trying so hard for so long, the bazillion times my boundaries are breached and I try again and again.
What other people see is usually the last straw and not what led up to it. They see when I crack and can take no more, and then they want to lecture me on patience they haven’t seen or been part of.
Rite of Awakening — Southern Gothic with bite, Book One of the Rites of Passage. Available direct from the author → Or read it free in my online Library.
Cutting people out of my life is never the first course of action, even if the person excised is obviously unhealthy and problematic to my life. Even then, I believe in the good in people and will give a second chance, often to my detriment.
Cutting people out, as I’ve discovered in my self-excavation, is always the result of boundaries not being honored. In analyzing this pattern, I see that people can do almost anything and I’ll give them another chance but when they plow through my boundary for the last time I can bear it, something just snaps and I’m done. To bystanders, it usually appears that someone did some small something and I overreacted and cut them out. That’s never the case. Never. The final straw is easily the one hundredth time or maybe the one thousandth.
I don’t want to cut someone out but if there is no other way to get them to honor the boundaries I set, I don’t feel I have a choice.
If you ever meet someone who says we used to be friends, even close friends, and they cannot tell you why we are no longer friends, it’s almost certainly because they couldn’t tell you where my boundaries were either…no matter how many times I pointed at the line in the sand and begged them not to cross it again.
Key Takeaway: Cutting people out is the result of boundaries not being honored.
A Southern witch returns home. Secrets won’t stay buried. A chance to confront and heal—or face the consequences.
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