I've been hovering in the background reading the blogs and always appreciating the effort made by you all in writing and commenting. It's been a while since I contributed and felt it time to pop in and say Hi.

Was that selfish of me? Taking and not giving! Should I have, at least, made a comment or acknowledged that I'd read it? Would that have made the blog writer feel any different? Or me?

I have found that my life has revolved around what I thought I should do or maybe more significantly, what I thought others thought I should do (if that makes sense!). People Pleaser: my middle name and yet I'm seen as very confident and assertive and was once accused by an older sibling of being heartless!

In retrospect, I understand that by creating my own space when I needed to, may have come across as being distant or disinterested and the "heartless" was perhaps a bit of emotional detachment. However, I have recently discovered that this opinion of me is generally made by people who are only taking from me anyway and in the search for my own space, I would no longer be serving their purpose.

I am learning to be quite protective of my own world, my space, my boundaries. Not in a reclusive way, not in a selfish way, just in an "I choose" kind of way. The best thing about this acceptance is that I don't feel the need to apologise for creating it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sociable, helpful and welcoming but I know its ok to do what's right for me and that might mean not inviting anyone in for a short while! So if you or I decide we need a little bit of peace behind our boundary wall, it's alright to take it, it's alright to recharge, it's alright to choose you, it's alright to enjoy it, it's alright not to feel guilty and it's alright to let people know.

Yvonne

A Moodscope member.