Bad Boundaries

Why we've forgotten how to help each other

Today’s column is two stories. The one I want to tell, but can’t, and the one where I project my larger frustration onto a seemingly mundane topic. The one where I am so angry about people who aren’t helping with serious crises—helping me, helping my friends who have had divorce nightmares, helping women in general—and the one where I muse about why I can’t seem to let people bring me dinner. Please be generous and gentle with me if the story on the page seems over-reactive and whiny. It is masking things I cannot say.

Eight years ago right now, I had Influenza A. I felt like I was dying. My skin hurt. I knew something wasn’t right. I went to Urgent Care with a fever of 103 and shallow breathing and borderline hallucinations. So when I felt those exact same symptoms last week, I knew what was going on. Flu A, again. And again, I took Tamiflu to prevent asthma complications and speed recovery. The stakes are higher now. I am a single mother. I couldn’t afford another night of fever dreams and legs too achy to walk down the stairs to pour myself a glass of orange juice.

I am the luckiest. I have so many people who text to check in on me daily, multiple times a day. I am grateful for every message. Most of them say the same thing that I say when my friends are sick or sad or stressed: “Let me know how I can help.”

This is what we all say, and we mean it. We want to help. And we aren’t sure where to begin. But I think all of us who have ever been sick or postpartum or grieving or dealing with a house flood or fire or crisis can agree that much of the time? We don’t know what we need. Or we do, but we don’t want to ask for it. And so the offers keep coming:

Text me if you need anything.
Let me know what you need.
Tell me how I can help.
Do you need me to bring you anything?

And I say the same thing. “It’s ok; I’m fine.”

That is on me.

God, my apologetic Good Girl is so worried that all the people who told me to text if I needed anything are going to think I’m judging them with this weird Good Samaritan take-down, and next time, I won’t have anyone to text to check on me. Shit, it’s awful being a woman, you guys. It’s not you, friends! I do it, too! I promise I do.

We all do it! We want people to know that we are available to them, that we care, but we aren’t generally sure what to do. What our place is. If our help is needed. If our casserole is gross. People have food preferences and allergies and favorite grocery items and orange juice brands and also, privacy is just everything isn’t it? We should always give people space, right? We can’t force ourselves on them!

I reached out twice to ask for help since I got sick. My dear friend and podcast co-host came by with the pulp-free orange juice and NyQuil that I knew I needed if I were going to avoid death. When I texted, “Are you home? I need you,” my best friend + neighbor was at my doorstep in ninety seconds.

But it’s embarrassing to say, “I would kill for a chicken burrito bowl,” or “Come make me a latte in my own kitchen because I’m too tired to stand there.” Also, I have two able-bodied children and DoorDash and Instacart and does anyone really need anything these days, like really, that they can’t do for themselves? (Edit. My able-bodied children have also gone down since the initial writing of this. Gulp.)

On Friday, one friend dropped off hot soup without asking if I wanted it. God, did I want it! It was the most delicious thing I have ever eaten and I wept after the first bite. Another friend, bless, DoorDashed me some bourbon for my hot toddies. I can technically order any damn thing I want or need for myself, but the soup and bourbon in their beautiful diversity (Love Languages are a many splendored thing, amiright?) were gifts of mercy and tenderness.

This guy has not left my side.

This is NOT to shit on the myriad “Can I bring you anything?” offers! And here’s where I get to my meandering, semi-lucid point. Women need help. Mothers need help. SINGLE MOTHERS NEED SO MUCH FUCKING HELP YOU GUYS.

(Men need help, too, and despite my invocation of Grandma’s “I’m not on that committee” get out of jail free card, I’m actually planning to write about that soon. Because I have some very specific ideas about the kind of help men need right now, and you guys are fucking psyched to hear that aren’t you??)

OK, let me shake off the wet wool blanket of that parenthetical and get back to the point. Ahem. We. Need. Help. So what’s the hold up? It’s three-fold, I think.

1. When people say, “How can I help/ let me know what you need/ text if I can do anything,” we do not reply with honesty and vulnerability. Because we are too conditioned not to ask for help. Even me! And I fucking LOVE help! Yet I am not going to say, “Actually, I would really love this.” Because, who the hell am I to suggest that I need hot soup, a housecleaner, a massage, a gift card more than anyone else?
   
   We all have problems, right? So we shame ourselves back into independence. No, no, we demur. I’ve got this. After all, we have money in our bank accounts to order our own DoorDash, and post-COVID has made it so very easy for us to meet all our own needs with the click of a button in an app.
   

2. We are so far underwater we don’t even know what we want or need. What do you need? Where do I even begin? I want to say, while sighing wearily and pulling my Taylor Swift throw blanket more tightly around me. But in order to get to this point of complete overwhelm, we have allowed ourselves to repeat Problem #1 over and over. We have crippled ourselves with our own stubborn patterns of independence, because we believe that to admit we do NOT have it all together means we have failed.

   And why do we believe that successfully cooking our own soup, always keeping NyQuil in stock, ordering our own groceries, and pulling our own trash to the curb on the right day is the only way to avoid being labeled a failure? Isn’t it obvious? The patriarchy. Jesus, catch up. And by the time we realize that we’d kill for someone to drop off some Noodles, our problems are pushing up against the linen closet door like an episode of Stress Hoarders.
   

3. THAT IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS. It’s a family matter. We can’t do anything about it. Stay in your lane. Not my problem. I am not my brother’s/ sister’s/ neighbor’s keeper. We grab our kids by the shoulders, tell them to avert their eyes, tell them it’s not our problem, keep walking. We no longer get involved in each other’s lives as intimately as we did in previous generations. Now it’s gauche to just show up with a plate of cookies. I want the cookies! Bring the cookies! (They’re gluten free, right? Sorry bout me.)

   Why exactly do we do this? Liability concern? Fear of making things worse? I know that I personally have not interfered in volatile situations in public out of a deep concern for making something worse for the victims. That’s valid.
   
   But I think it comes down to this: Modern Americans are obsessed with boundaries. Bad boundaries are the generalized version of helicopter parenting. People need to pull themselves out of their own messes, right? I think we are all constantly afraid to overstep. This makes me sad, and it makes me want to (over)step up my own Acts of Kindness game: If I drop off something at your door that you don’t want, you can freeze it or throw it away. But I don’t want to ask you to make one more decision about your own wellbeing. Let me take that off your plate.
   
   I have angry feelings about men in this category, you guys. I’m going to tread lightly here. I feel like men are even more likely to give struggling people a wide berth. They’ll reach out if they need me. No, they won’t. It’s not my place. Yes, it is. I don’t want to get in the middle. Get in the middle, goddammit. Say the thing that’s hard to hear, show up at the front door, stage an intervention, do something. What if you could help? What are you so afraid of?

But it’s not just strict boundaries and a “not my family” mentality. I think there is also some kind of hell-loop between numbers 2 and 3—it’s not just that we are afraid to overstep, show up for our loved ones, bring the meal they may not like: we are way too fucking maxed out to help everyone else! I heard an episode of We Can Do Hard Things about asking for help, and Glennon was like, “But really, don’t ask me for help! I can’t help!” (Don’t quote me on that—I am 48 hours free of fever dreams, you guys, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t make that up.)

How many times do YOU use the word bandwidth in conversation? Because I do it all the time: I simply do not have the bandwidth for this right now. I mean those words, and those words indicate good, healthy boundaries. I cannot be a short-order cook/ errand girl/ crisis counselor for all the people I genuinely care about, and neither can you. But what if we didn’t get to the degree of Point #2 up there—ultimate depletion, overwhelm, obliteration? What if our ecosystems were modified?

Because let’s be honest—it IS bad boundaries to drop off meals for every sick mom in town. It IS bad boundaries to answer every crisis phone call when you’re in the middle of your own. But shouldn’t we not all be drowning? I’m having deja vu, because pretty sure I have written this post, thought these thoughts, seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending.

Because the ending is this: We all sit alone (physically, emotionally, what have you) in our homes, scattered throughout the suburbs, wondering how much more of this we can take. I will write this flu-laced rant, feel so sad that we are all trying so hard and feeling so depleted and isolated, see that we really are trying so hard to be there for each other, knowing that the systems that keep us stuck here are going to keep right on rolling. I will bring you some soup, though. You can throw it away if you don’t want it. Or freeze it for the next time you want to help someone and don’t know what to do.

It’s okay that you told your friend you were fine when you aren’t. It’s hard to admit we need help. It’s also okay if you offered your help to someone else in a vague way. You’re a kind and compassionate person for doing that. But if your friend says, “No, no, I’m fine,” maybe ask what toppings she wants on her pizza. Or just DoorDash her a damn chocolate cake. It doesn’t have to be gluten free—I’m not the recipient of every hypothetical scenario. 😉And if your friend texts YOU and says, “Can I bring you something?” Tell her what you want. Please.

XOXO,
Steph