Entry № 27 · Plate xxvii
On BoundariesGive up toxic people. Stand near those who push you up.
You become the average of the five voices nearest your ear.
The explanation
You cannot out-discipline a circle that quietly wants you small. The people you spend the most time with set the invisible thermostat of what feels normal, possible, and worth attempting. Leaving relationships that drain you is not cruelty. It is hygiene. And the empty chairs do not stay empty for long — they get filled by people who clap when you grow.
The story
In my late twenties I had a Sunday-night dinner group I had loved since college. Six of us, always the same table, always the same waiter. Slowly, over years, the tone had shifted. Anyone who mentioned an ambition got teased until it wilted. Someone would announce they were thinking of applying to grad school, and by dessert it had been reframed as delusion.
I didn't notice for a long time. I noticed when I stopped mentioning things. When I stopped applying to things. When I laughed pre-emptively at my own ideas to beat them to it. I didn't stage a confrontation. I didn't send a group text. I just started missing one Sunday, then two, then most. Within a year I had drifted out cleanly, without a speech.
The chairs at my table filled with new people, some I met in a running club, one at a workshop I finally attended. The new voices asked 'when?' instead of 'why?'. Within eighteen months I had started two projects the old table would have laughed to death. I don't blame those old friends. They weren't villains. They were simply comfortable, and comfort at that table required that no one at it grow. I miss them sometimes. I do not miss who I was becoming for their approval.