the one about boundaries
the great summer Jam Feud
Somewhere smack in the middle of the summer I was 14, I was at my best friend’s house making buttery toast with the absolute most delicious raspberry freezer jam. It was the perfect ratio of tart to sweet pizzazz. I was relishing it.
I was used to my friend being generous with the yummy goods at her house — sharing them freely with me. As I made my toast, I checked to make sure I wasn't taking more than my fair share and was relieved to see there were many jars of jam in the fridge.
Like I said, the general rule was that I was allowed to eat whatever I found in the kitchen, so all in all, I felt like I was welcome and participating in seasonal abundance. I was in a deep, sticky, raspberry red reverie of pleasure and gratitude when —
my best friend burst into the kitchen and ruined everything.
She snatched the jam jar from my hands and announced I had eaten too much jam. That I would not be allowed any more jam. That her family needed to preserve the jam.
And I was like, “huuuuuuuhhhhhhh???”
Bull-jam-sh*t.
“I just saw like five more jars of jam in the fridge,” I said.
Followed by, “that doesn't make sense.”
I sensed that her reprimand had very little to do with jam and much more to do with the group of boys we were currently crushing on, who very recently expressed that I was cute but had not said anything equally affirming about her.
“This isn't about the jam,” I said.
She insisted it was. We fought. Hard.
There was a tricky little burr in our fight. Because within her ammo she had a raspberry-sized seed of truth: I had been a little entitled about the jam. I had assumed based on all of our friendship and sharing up to that point that jam-sharing followed suit. I didn't follow the social norm of trying to be surprised, ask her for the millionth time if it was ok, pretend that I didn't really want any or minimize my own joy.
Instead, I wholeheartedly jammed out.
Such shamelessness and rejection of performance has long confused others and gotten me into social trouble.
I have always felt a little embarrassed about life’s common courtesies that make zero sense to me and therefore do not participate in. The social contract, if you will. I believe in respect, integrity, direct and expressive communication. I believe in empathy and deep kindness, which is most often not the same as people-pleasing or doing the things that earn general social approval.
This has made me somewhat of an outlier.
This has also made me paranoid that I must be doing something wrong (to which these days, I say, feck that, I know who I am).
But back to that tension-filled kitchen —
I called my friend out for what I felt were her real motivations. I saw her cheeks burn with confirmation even as she doubled down on her defense. I told her she could keep her jam and she could keep to herself. That I wouldn't be willing to talk to her until she was ready to admit where her actual discontent was. And I stomped out of the house to walk home.
I ignored her for two weeks. One day into the ice out, she felt horrible and started writing me daily letters of apology. I said we needed time.
Was I abusing my power and self-righteously indignant? Or did somewhere deep in my hormonal, adolescent self live a knowing that if I let my friend off the hook so soon, the behavior would repeat?
We eventually reconciled. I became known in our friend circle, which is still close to this day, as the boundary-setter.
We still laugh about the jam. I admit I was a little entitled. She admits she was actually purely jealous. My friend insists that I taught her a valuable lesson.
Not just about boundaries but about not making oneself small or false just to earn social acceptance and approval. About standing in our full power, truth and pleasure and how doing so both demands that others do the same while celebrating them for it.
About understanding there is enough beauty, talents, love and, frankly, freezer jam for us all. So we need not tear each other down with petty, thinly veiled comparisons, hierarchies and fabricated wrongdoings…
This concludes part one of ‘the one about boundaries’.
Please return next week to read part two and see how the jam scenario exists in my life now.
xx,
Yan
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