The Hostess

Nothing could keep my enemies from banging at my door. No dead bolt was strong enough. I could hear them shouting on the other side to be let in. Who knows what they wanted-sex, warmth, company, or more. And I found more times than not, they could infiltrate my home with one sweep of the right word. One, “please forgive me” or a couple, “I love you’s.” Next thing I knew I was sitting on the couch with one of them. I was cooking for them. I was sleeping with them. The call was coming from inside the house.

No one else unlocked that door but me. No one else wrapped their sweaty palm around that metal knob but my hungry hands. My fingers desperate to touch something besides my books and my tarot cards and myself. This was only a reflection of how my heart had allowed me to be beaten down by life, people, love and how parched my body was because of it.

Imagine you’ve been walking through a desert for three days. Your throat feels like sandpaper, your gut is a hollow cave and the baby hairs on your forehead are stuck to your skin through sweet, salty sweat. And after being on your own without food and water, a strange traveler finds you in a desolate space. This person is riding on a camel, looking down on you with a bottle of water in his hands. And you beg, “Please, Sir, may I have some of your water?”

And he replies, “Yes, but only under one condition.”

“Yes, yes. Whatever you want!” you say, “Please just give me some water.”

He smiles upon your sun-beaten face and warns, “This will quench your thirst, but it will also make you sick.”

You are more likely to eat from a poisonous hand when your belly is a ravenous monster. I kept trying to build boundaries outside of myself. I would tell a person what I wanted, what I didn’t want in hopes they would abide by these rules. Unfortunately, these are just wind, these are just words, these are only whispers against a roaring sea. These are white flags waved at werewolves who arch their backs to the moon and laugh. Spoken words mean nothing to a pair of claws. Boundaries built on breath alone crumble before the hunger of those who never planned to honor them.

My heart is a beautiful thing. Pumping all of this red juice into and through my veins, filling me up like a proper Koolaid pitcher. It’s the juice of addicts. It’s the smell that attracts a hundred sharks circling around you like ring around the Rosie. It’s the thump, thump, thump a vampire hears on the other side of the door. And she has been my worst nightmare. The heart is the dumping ground for what the mind refuses to carry. The heart will willfully endure what the mind deems silly, useless and infantile. The separation between the two is the nothing but a tale of siamese twins. One wants one thing and the other wants something entirely different; both attempting to live out what they find to be most beneficial. You must refuse the heart to build boundaries within. Just as you must refuse the mind a certain strain of thoughts so you remain in control of your actions.

To refuse the heart and tame the mind is to lock the door and throw away the key, to keep the call inside silent, no matter how sweetly it pleads. Refusing the heart means holding back the hand that reaches for poison. Refusing the mind means silencing the whisper that says, ‘It’s all you deserve.’ Together, they learn to listen, not lead.

There was a man in my life that I loved very much. I still do. I realized that I couldn’t say no to him. I hated how I could easily bend at every whim, take every call, forgive at the first, ‘Sorry.’ Waving the white flag wasn’t working. I had to build the boundary with myself. I didn’t have a set of rules that I lived by. I had to set these rules as the fence that surrounded this metaphorical house.

My Rules:

1.) You are not allowed to open the door if they call you names.

2.) You are not allowed to open the door if they don’t do what they said they were going to do.

3.) You are not allowed to open the door if this person lies.

These are just a few examples.

See, I had to make rules within self. And then you would show these set of rules to said person and give them back the control.

Example: “If you refer to me in that manner, you will not have contact with me. It’s honestly up to you on how you want this to go.”

I had to give the “control” back to them. But my rules never changed. And if their behavior didn’t either, then I was not allowed to open the door. These rules became immovable. They were etched in stone, and no one could change them-not even me. What I did was I tricked my brain to treating the relationship as a metaphorical establishment. It has rules, code, a dress code and if someone can’t follow these, then they can’t come inside. It was almost as if I was taking a third party approach.

“Sorry, buddy. I don’t make the rules, I just work here.”

When you have low self worth or people have treated you less than, you subconsciously, you allow your boundaries to be taken advantage of because it’s that parched throat that keeps the poison in business. You can trick yourself into acting as almost a third-party employee for your heart. You will be pushed to find other ways of quenching this thirst besides drinking the water from the guy on the camel. I’ve learned that to every knock deserves an answer, not every thirst needs quenching, and sometimes the greatest strength is in letting the door stay closed.