I’ve been thinking about something in a new way today and l hope I can word it right. The short version is: Someone got stuck in my head in the bad way and I realized that I don’t want to get stuck in someone else’s.
I’ve been going through a hard time for the past several months. My soon-to-be-former boss was competent on a technical level but pretty negative and had zero emotional boundaries, putting me in the middle of her situation at work to boot. For months, I never knew if a video call with her would stick to work or if she’d end up sobbing and sharing her woes. I feel concern about her emotional wellbeing but that messed me up. I’m not graceful about it at this point.
Obviously, I should have done better setting boundaries. It is part of my Trauma and I will integrate those lessons, but that’s not what I’m ruminating on at the moment.
I have spent so much time worrying about this person’s actions and opinion of me. Whether she’ll be looking to me for emotional support every time we talk. Whether she’s okay when there’s nothing I can do to help. Whether I took the right side or a side at all in a fight I never should have known she was having. Whether I betrayed her trust by confessing the situation I was in when she told me confidential stuff about her work situation that’s really not good for me to know about. Whether I’m heartless for not being more upset at the idea of her leaving.
I have been so frustrated at how much of my brainspace this person and situation have been taking, how far it kicked me down the hill of trauma recovery. If I let myself be, I’m fucking furious about it. The last year has been a blur of sandpaper over my eyes and I despise that it happened. I don’t ever want to treat someone that way and make them feel like it’s their job to take care of me when they didn’t consent to it.
What I realize, though, is that I also never want to be the stuck in someone else’s head like that. I don’t want to live in your head rent-free, or at all, unless it’s actually beneficial to you, like we’re good friends or something. And that’s really my point here. I don’t want to mentally hang onto people whose presence doesn’t positively impact me and I don’t want to be that for others either.
It’s not something I can control, of course, because other people’s feelings are their own. But I’d far rather be neutral than stick in someone’s craw the way she stuck in mine. To whatever extent I’m able to influence my impact, if it’s not a good one, let me float on out of your head without another thought.
