Boundaries Aren’t Mean; They’re Clarity in a World of Smoke and Mirrors
Let’s clear something up:
Saying no, calling out mistreatment, or walking away from dysfunction does not make you mean. It makes you clear. It makes you self-aware. It makes you strong.
But to someone who’s used to controlling the narrative, that strength can look like a threat.
For years, I thought being a “good person” meant staying quiet, absorbing people’s outbursts, and excusing their bad behavior. I thought that if I kept the peace, even when I was the only one being targeted, that it made me kind, that it made me loyal, that it made me loving.
But it didn’t.
All it did was train me to abandon myself. To ignore my gut. To stay small while someone else threw tantrums, then turned around and blamed me for their explosions.
They’d call it “provoking” when I asked a question. “Provoking” when I stood up for myself. It was always smoke and mirrors- always flipping the script to make me the problem.
But let me be very clear: Accepting someone’s constant abuse, manipulation, or emotional chaos doesn’t make you nice. It doesn’t make you good. It makes you someone who’s been conditioned to think your worth is tied to tolerating pain.
It’s not.
Being authentic means you stop dancing around other people’s dysfunction just to avoid being called “mean.” Being whole means you stop buying into the lie that love equals silence, or that peace comes from pretending nothing’s wrong.
You are not cruel for having boundaries. You are not a bad person for refusing to play along with someone’s emotional circus. And you are absolutely not responsible for someone else’s inability to manage their reactions.
Sometimes the only way to stop being “the bad guy” in someone’s false version of the story… is to stop playing the part entirely.
And that, my friend, is where freedom begins.
