I have a habit of holding onto jobs and supposed friendships because of fear. I let myself be abused too long at my job with Hy-Vee and I have let other people abuse me when I really didn’t need to but because I have very few friends and think that I am somehow the Princess of Friendship like Twighlight Sparkle who can resolve any friendship problem. However, I am easily deceived into thinking someone is a friend when their behavior later reveals they WANT to hurt me. I have been very emotional this week over some recent and not so recent events that have left me feeling hopeless about many things.
I want to share a video I recently recorded while on a walk to work because it is especially relevant to what I am about to say about setting boundaries.
I am feeling better now than I was when I recorded this video but at the time I was in a very bad mood after my phone call with the EEOC. It looks like there will be no justice to stop Hy-Vee from abusing employees and defending sexual harassment. I tried to let that go and move on but having to talk about the entire situation and whole series of events that led me to resign at Hy-Vee to avoid an abusive store manager, leaving aside a different employee who was sexually harassing me.
But the larger problem I have is setting boundaries with abusive people. There are some people who cannot be reasoned with no matter what I say because they live just to cause pain and fight.
I try to educate people about Veganism and Transgender people for the purpose of stopping violence against animals and LGBT people in general. But what I can’t do is fix stupid and hatred. What I need is emotional self defense skills. I need ways of handling people who are trying to hurt me.
For example:
Recently, Sovereign Lazarus was calling me a pedophile, accusing me of “using lesbian as a slur” and “pro-plop” for being Pro-Life. In this case my solution was to block her on Instagram. I don’t need this person in my life and I don’t even know them well enough for it to matter.
And Monique Lukens, my former cohost of the Celibate Vegan Voices is not someone I want to deal with either. She has accused me of lying about being asexual, having a gay relationship with a friend in England, and being a drug addict like someone who uses heroin or cocaine because I take estrogen and I am “Going against God for changing my body”. In the past, she also accused me of being a sellout because I wore a mask as required for my job at Hy-Vee during 2020 and 2021 during Covid.
I am already struggling enough to work my full time job, do online school with Full Sail University, and trying to find time to eat, sleep, and work on my computer programming which I am getting very good at recently. I will not hesitate to block people who want to keep criticizing me for how I live my life. But you know what the worst part is? More than half the times that people are hating me, it is because of false accusations and assumptions that are not even close to being true.
One thing different about me is that I make it extremely easy for people to get to know the real me. It’s not like it is hard when I have published so many books and have so many blog posts and videos on social media. But clearly some people are not interested in knowing who I am and what I care about. For people like this I will cut them out of my life.
But I also don’t like to cut people off without giving the reason why. Too often I let people keep abusing me and I don’t say anything because I know they will do it more if they know that it bothers me. If I don’t set a boundary, they win and keep abusing me. If I do set a boundary, I feel like they win because they know that have the power to upset me, but at least I can prevent some future abuse from the same person.
Emotional self-defense is a skill that I can improve on just like I do at playing Tetris or Chess. One of these days, I will win.
Chastity White Rose 