Through the blur that were the years spent “building my career,” I met a man and he asked me to marry him. He was wonderful and caring, and he still is. We were happy together, so when he got down on one knee, I said yes despite having been adamantly against the idea of marriage my whole life. My mother, after I told her the news, didn’t say congratulations but: “Wow, I really didn’t know if you’d say yes.”
Well, yes mom. I did. Why? I didn’t know how to say no.
Hell, “no” wasn’t even in my repertoire. I did whatever I needed to keep the peace. Keep a good GPA. Keep money in my bank account. But now my inability to set a boundary when it came to honoring my own happiness was officially catching up. After six years of marriage, the truth of never wanting an “I do” in the first place had crept up in a myriad of ways, and soon it was yelling at me so loudly that I couldn’t drown it out anymore. So, I quit my marriage, too.
After my divorce, I started therapy. That’s where I’d learned just how much my lack of boundaries had been sending me running in circles my whole life. Ignoring my own needs had become second nature. It ensured things didn’t change. It ensured people stuck around. And as it’d turn out, it also ensured I stayed employed. And, at the heart of everything, it ensured some part of me felt safe.
But what felt like winning — whether it was friends, promotions or love — had actually been losing what mattered most. I’d lost time to pursue my dream of writing a book, friendships that kept me afloat, and ultimately, myself because I never learned to set a boundary to keep people from taking too much of me. So I set out to do just that.
With the help of my therapist, I started saying no to plans I didn’t want to do. I started saying no to holidays if it meant being around family members who belittled me. I even started to say no to friends who didn’t know how to set boundaries of their own. That’s when something all-too familiar happened: My team shrank at work, and I was asked to pick up the slack. It felt like the ultimate test, and I accepted:
No, I cannot work extra hours because we are short-staffed.
No, I cannot do two jobs because someone left.
No, I cannot hit two project deadlines instead of one by Monday.
I uttered that last one on a Friday, but I made a fatal mistake afterward. When my boss pushed me harder to hit both deadlines, instead of sticking to my guns, I said the two words that have gotten my people-pleasing self into more sleepless nights than any others: “I’ll try.”
I woke up with a tightness in my chest on Sunday morning. The work was still not done despite trying my damndest the day before. Could I try to finish it if I worked another seven-hour day? Yes. Would I have to cancel plans with friends? Yes. Would I have to forgo working on my manuscript? Yes. Then, in spite of my ego wanting so badly to please, I decided the answer was no.
Come Monday, instead of feeling like a hero walking into work like I often did at the beginning, I felt nauseous. I immediately admitted to my team that no, I was not able to hit the deadline, but I tried. An hour later, my boss called me into her office.
“It’s less than a month into the new year, and I already hear you saying ‘no,’ again,” she said, exasperated. “It’s unacceptable.”
Little did she know, I’d spent the past three years in therapy practicing how to say exactly that: N-O. Two little letters that when put together had the magical ability to set a boundary that would protect me from burning out and betraying my integrity. But little did I know that when you finally learn that no is indeed an acceptable answer, you will also quickly discover who disagrees. By the end of the week, I was fired.
That Friday, I was escorted out of the building. My friends were left to pack my things from my desk in small boxes like I had done so many times for others. I felt like a complete failure, not yet seeing the longer story buried beneath the surface of how I got here. But I do now. What felt like a mortifying public defeat was actually my biggest internal victory yet.
The people-pleaser in me died that week, and I admit that I completely crumbled after getting kicked to the curb. In many ways, my worst fears were realized: Staying true to yourself by setting boundaries can result in an enormous amount of pain. But from the rubble, I emerged as someone else.
Looking back, with no full-time job in sight, I’ve made the hard decision not to look for one. As a recovering over-achieving people-pleaser who has struggled so hard to learn to set boundaries, the risk of signing up to work for someone else who doesn’t respect them is simply too great for me.
Right now, I’ve decided to work jobs that don’t demand more than I can give. As a result, I have restored friendships and even finished the book I dreamed of writing. Yes, it’s scary going my own way. Yes, some people doubt I can make it work. Yes, I feel lonely and uncomfortable most days. But, no: I will not let that stop me.
