Chapter 5 Ayano Aishi: Learning about respecting boundaries


I had been hesitant to tell her father about the lessons, but I felt so frustrated and needed someone to tell about it. I felt disappointed for breaking my promise to mother, but the thoughts bothered me.

The things father told me were hard to understand, just like the books about emotions, but I knew how important they are.

One of the interesting things I learned is that everyone will have their own perspective and thoughts on things. Maybe that´s the reason mother and father are so different? They probably had very different experiences which led them to see things so differently from each other.

I got really frustrated at not feeling anything, so I petted a stray kitten to feel something. Nothing. Then some relaxation. I decided to do something drastic to finally feel something, but I regretted it. Despite father warnings about hurting people or animals, I wanted to smash the kitten to finally feel something, even if it is hurt, grief or guilt. When I was about to smash it however, a wave of constricting pain suddenly assaulted me and I bent down and dropped the kitten. It was that unsettling feeling of the dam inside me that wanted to break out, and hurting the kitten would have opened it. I did not want that.

I felt like crying for a moment, but thought about chemical formulas and it went away. There there, all right.

I decided to pet the kitten some more, it hadn't run away and only was a little bit confused at being dropped from a low height. After a while it stopped purring and didn't let me pet it anymore, and even tried to scratch me, every time I tried to pet it. What was that? Something new. I needed to know , I only had a vague idea about that new concept so I went home and told father about the kitten.

I found out what is it. Animals, just like people don´t want to be forced to do things against their will, and unless it is a serious situation, like life or death/injury, you should respect their boundaries.

That why the kitten tried to scratch me. It had enough and I had to accept that it had enough. (Mom why don´t you respect Fath-)

If you respect their boundaries, they will trust you, but if you overstep their boundaries they will hate you and avoid you, and not help you and oftentimes even want to hurt you. I you accidentally overstep a boundary one time you need recognize it, people will look disappointed, hurt or will try to withdraw, and you need to apologize to them. If the accept your apology you need to make sure that you don´t overstep their boundaries again, because then they will likely not accept your apology a second time. Some people are unforgiving and won't even accept your apology the first time you made a mistake, but those people are hard to deal with, you should still try to apologize to them if you can, even if they don´t like you, it will be kind to do so and the will at least dislike you less.

Respecting each other's boundaries is a key point of Social interactions. Hopefully I have learned enough, so I won´t make too many mistakes while talking to people.