Jobs are not who we are. Our friends, families and partners are not who we are. Over the last ten years I have, unintentionally, tied my identity to do the jobs I had. My identity was tied heavily to journalism when I was a journalist, then it was tied heavily to the company I worked for after that. When you tie your identity to the job that you do you become so engulfed in it that you don’t know where you start and the job ends. You live in a discombobulation of life-work and the people in your life become the people at your work. The lines are blurred where you go to dinner and all you talk about with your friends is the job and the things that happen at work.

Working from home in the pandemic gave me the opportunity to access what my identity outside work looked like. Who I was without the place I worked, the social aspects of my work colleagues, where I began and work ended. The pandemic gave me an opportunity to create real boundaries around work and the people I work with, to understand who was actually my friend and who I happened to be friendly but was just a colleague. 

This exercise in boundary creation is very important especially in adult relationships. The thing is, the pandemic showed me that I had very little boundaries, or at least very little communicated boundaries, which meant lines were always blurred. We don’t just tie ourselves to work, we tie ourselves to people as well.  I am heavily tied to the support that I either give to my friends and family or the support they give to me. That sometimes it’s hard to fully understand who I am with the people in my life. This is a problematic approach to the way we do friendships especially adult friendships because it is tasking on your mental health. It’s also tasking on the mental health of your friends. It is unfair to put so much on your friends, it is unfair for your friends to put so much on you. Just as  it is unfair for a job to ask your whole life for you. Yes I know, no job overtly asks for it but in the subtle ways and details the perception that you are family is created. Who wouldn’t give their whole life to family? Because family will always take care of you and always be there for you, you’re always seen and heard. However, at the end of the day and rightly so, the priority of any company should be the business and how to make sure that business is one that makes money so the entirety of the company thrives. You are not family. 

So when a company tells you to bring your whole self to work, you have to ask them: will you take my dark days? 

And in all honesty, I don’t know if a company should take your dark days. I think your company should take your professional, present days and your competent days.Your dark days should be taken outside of the company. Because this is why the sole idea of work life balance is a huge problem, especially for millennials. Your dark days and happy days should go to your friends, family, therapist and support structures. 

We also run into the same disillusions when it comes to our friendships, we make them family and for the most part it works out and it’s amazing. But sometimes it can be dangerous. In my case it is imperative that I am protecting or taking care of either my friends or my family. This means my entire support structure becomes one person or three people and when those three people are not available my entire world comes crashing down and it is ugly.

We live in this world where we keep trying to decide that our notion of relationship and companionship needs to be so heavily tied that we begin to deprive ourselves of oxygen in the way we work around things. It’s mental awareness month and in every session with my therapist in the last two weeks, this idea of what boundaries look like has been front and center. One question keeps coming up: Who are you? Away from all these things and people. Who are you outside the job you do? Who are you outside your family?  Who are you outside your friend’s circle? 

My entire identity cannot only be a mishmash of what I gain from the people around me or the job I do. Yes, they should heavily contribute and influence. But they shouldn’t be the soul and the core of who we are. Who I am. Perhaps this is why becoming Michelle again has been so critical in my head lately.  

Understanding that things end and sometimes we must let them allow us to know we are more than those things. It also imprints that there’s something to lose, ourselves. If we understand that our own identity could be lost as collateral damage to our relationships and jobs . Perhaps we’ll take better care of how we show up and how we represent. How we give time, how we create space. How we see people when they tell us who they are. But also how we see ourselves, how we grow in ourselves, how we build ourselves and each other. How we celebrate life and these moments because they are all fleeting. How we love our friends, so deeply and passionately. How we forgive them and they forgive us. But more importantly how allow them room to breathe so we can watch them grow, thrive and be happy. And if they fall, we can pick and show them who they are.

It’s so fascinating to just be in the space where everything seems so clear. Because our happiness is our choice. Everything in life is a choice, well barring a few sociopolitical issues, which I will not tackle right now. But the things we can control is, who we love we may not be in our control, but how we do it is. 

Boundaries give us freedom to live in our fullness, to rise and build, fall, break and mend. So this mental awareness month, create some boundaries.