At my first Bible study this year I prayed for discernment, discernment in my relationships with people (professionally and personally). I wanted the ability to recognize unseriousness from afar and the courage to say no without over-explaining. What I’ve come to understand is that my discernment and my boundaries are deeply intertwined. I’m still not sure which comes first; whether weak boundaries affect discernment or a lack of discernment erodes boundaries but I know they move together.
Yesterday though, I noticed a shift.
Someone reached out to me on Instagram about working on a project. From the beginning the communication was vague there was no clear client, no clear scope, no concrete direction or at least he withheld them if there were. It felt like a red flag but I briefly rationalized it as self preservation/caution on his part, given his role as an agent. We moved the conversation to WhatsApp, and every few days he’d send me a project I’d worked on, asking about my role in it. I’m clearly a photographer, yet I found myself repeatedly clarifying what should have already been obvious. Some of them were video and photo projects so again, I excused the ignorance.
He then shared another project of mine. His client wanted the look and feel of the images that eventually made it onto billboards; images that were not mine, as another photographer handled that portion of the work. He liked my version and wanted to work with me but the client specifically wanted that feel. On hearing this I told him it was okay if we didn’t collaborate on this particular project and suggested that another project might be a better fit for both of us.
He then asked me to introduce him to the team that worked on that project. I hesitated at first because there was a quiet unease in losing out and still offering support, but I made the introduction anyway. When the email went unanswered, the dynamic shifted and suddenly it became a situation where he was subtly trying to recruit me to help find solutions for a project he still hadn’t confirmed I was even a part of. He later suggested adding me to a WhatsApp group with other photographers he was considering and then it happened- I said no. I told him I’d prefer to wait for confirmation before proceeding.
This may seem small and might be considered the wrong move but for me, it wasn’t.
In the past, the mere possibility of work would send me into a familiar spiral I'd be eager, anxious, desperate to do everything right and beating myself up if it didn't come through. I would try to prove my worth before it was ever questioned, driven by a quiet fear that I didn’t deserve the opportunity in the first place. It fed into my need to be liked, to be chosen, to be validated. My partner at the time will then be left with the work of nursing my feelings from the self loathing to the "what Ifs" that followed afterward. A rather exhausting cycle. Sigh.
This time, I didn’t chase and I didn’t panic. When he repeatedly “confirmed” interest over text only to edit or retract it moments later, I simply told him to return when things were certain. Maybe chasing would have gotten me the job on second thought I genuinely doubt it. But what mattered more was that I didn’t abandon myself. I recognized early on that this situation might not work out and even if it did it would require me to set clear boundaries something I truly struggle with. That knowledge and acceptance alone felt liberating.
This morning, I listened to a YouTube video the psychology of self-transformation, and one idea stayed with me: transformation doesn’t always mean changing who you are. Sometimes, it means integration; learning to recognize and work with the parts of yourself you’ve tried to suppress.
For a long time, I believed I needed fixing and in wanting to become someone else, I ignored parts of myself I didn’t like instead of understanding them. But transformation begins with knowing, and honestly for a while, I simply didn’t know myself. My ex asked me a question when our relationship was coming to an end " did our relationship just happen to you?" At the time I was hurt by that because there were a lot of conscious decisions I made in our time together. Loving her being one of the many. But I also know now that multiple truths can exist. There were also a lot of unconscious decisions, decisions that if I had made with the presence of mind that I am now intentionally trying to develop, would have turned out differently.
There’s a level of consciousness required for real change, and I haven't reached it yet. I still don’t fully know who I am and honestly I still feel very lost. But now it feels like learning a slow, painful craft like weaving a cloth by hand. The first stitch is finally in. The rest will follow. There will be pricks, mistakes, and moments of doubt, but there's also a silent trust that what becomes of this process will be beautiful.
