Earlier this year, I made a conscious decision to stop doing anything I didn’t want to do, unless I was being paid to do so (look: I even wrote about it!). No more going to events out of obligation. No more forcing myself to attend parties just to show face. No more agreeing to activities that I knew I wouldn’t enjoy (escape rooms, public speaking, sharing a room, bowling, big group trips—actually, anything in big groups, anything too cold or sporty, pop-up events that involve loitering on the side, the list goes on).
I made adjustments to my social life. I stopped reaching out to people who didn’t make an effort, or who didn’t really get me. I stopped replying to people who only got in touch when they needed something. This was a life cleanse, a mass excavation of everything that was not in alignment with how I wanted to spend my limited time on earth.
Though this may all sound drastic, a bit “late-stage capitalism,” like the living embodiment of an Instagram infographic from an unlicensed therapist, it was in many ways a response to a lifetime of people-pleasing and being overly anxious about what I perceived others to be thinking. I would have to throw myself in the opposite direction, the logic went, in order to ideally land somewhere in the middle.
So far, I have actually been much happier and more content. Endless social hangs have been replaced with quality time, and I don’t feel bad if I want to watch reruns of The Osbournes on a Friday night instead of going to a small plates restaurant, followed by the club. But my life is also much, much quieter. Like, last Saturday, I don’t think I opened my mouth once, apart from to brush my teeth. I rarely ever take risks anymore—I can’t remember the last time I sent a risky text (I am married, to be fair), or ended up in the house of someone I did not know (in my 20s, I was always seeing into other peoples’ houses). I prefer it like this, but I also feel like a Reductress article made sentient. Have I, as the common parlance goes, protected my peace a little… too much?
TikTok is full of people who have done the same sort of thing, and now find themselves isolated. “Protected my peace so hard I don’t think I ever want a relationship again,” wrote one user. “POV: you protected your peace a little too much and now you only hang out with your mum,” wrote another. “Protected my peace so much I now have the life of an 85-year-old woman,” wrote another.
The idea is that everyone is so boundaried, so wrapped up in safeguarding their stability and living a life free from friction, that they’re forgetting to actually live. Isolating yourself is also the antithesis to community, which can’t be healthy on a societal scale, let alone a personal one. But how does one find a balance? Especially for those of us who have historically found it hard to say no?
I wonder whether age is an important factor here. It makes me depressed to think of 21-year-olds going to the gym before going to bed at 10 p.m. with their mouth taped up (why is everyone always at the gym? What is it that they’re preparing for?). Shouldn’t they be making out with people their parents don’t approve of in cities they’ve never been to before? Or, like, going to house parties and then crying in the bathroom and being hungover at work? Your 20s are for making mistakes and being insane and learning from it; they’re for finding out what you do and don’t like, or how you want to behave. It’s impossible to protect your peace if you don’t know what you’re protecting it from. “Protected my peace too much [I’ve] never even had a first anything,” wrote one user.
But also, just because I’m in my 30s, doesn’t mean I ought to suddenly live like a monk. When I look back on anything that I’ve ever found satisfying, there’s often been a sense of risk or initial reluctance involved. The first time I went on a rollercoaster (weird example, but stay with me), I really didn’t want to do it initially. But it ended up being the most exhilarating thing I’d done in ages (almost as if by design!). Sometimes, I wonder whether, in protecting my peace so much this year, I am missing out on all the proverbial rollercoasters. Maybe there’s a place to be found in the middle—one in which I’m not going to boring events or hanging out with people who aren’t my real friends, but one in which I’m not a human island, either.