-- Prentis Hemphill

If I don't love anyone, and I don't love me, can I have boundaries?

Sort of. I have boundaries. I use boundaries to make myself smaller. Speaking out got me slapped down, I'll be quiet like a mice.

“Boundaries give us the space to do the work of loving ourselves. They might be, actually, the first and fundamental expression of self-love. They also give us the space to love and witness others as they are, even those that have hurt us.”

The first quote came up in part 5 of Brene Brown's HBO series on Atlas of the Heart. The second when I was looking up Prentis Hemphill.

I feel very alien right now -- literally alien. Not human. something else.

Brown does this to me in her vids. She will claim on one hand to be a language populist, using words the way commoners use them, and then use them very differently from the way I do.

In Atlas of the Heart she's with an audience that clearly has read a bunch of her books, been to her whatevers, are long time fans and followers. But she assumes I know things I clearly don't. She shows clips to illustrate things from shows and movies I've never heard of. And often the concept goes right over my head.

I finished the series tonight, clinging to understanding the the way I used to cling to derivations in Quantum Mechanics. Each line sort of made sense from the previous line, but the whole thing was a jumble.

I hoped to have a better understanding of emotions and relationships from this series.

Instead, while I understand some more, I feel more broken than ever.