Boundaries

WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: This week, let’s explore the creative potential of limits, borders, and dividers of all types.

I was just trying to get to my car. I saw her with the corner of my eye, but I was hoping… No, no chance. Over years of being such an annoying presence in people’s lives, she has perfected the art of stopping them on the street, cutting right in front of them, so they cannot escape her incessant talking. I never ask her how she is because I never really want to know; yet she never fails to regale me with all the details of her life and more… Her medical history, her personal history, her relatives’ lives, her acquaintances’ lives; all the private details about everyone she knows, including herself, she will share with anyone crossing her path. A friend of hers died of cancer, she says. I don’t want to know all the gruesome details. I don’t have a choice. All she cares is that the poor woman wanted to be cremated and her family are following her wishes instead of having her buried ‘like a good Christian’. By now she is so close to me that I can feel her disgusting breath on my neck. She never has any respect for personal space. I hate that I was raised to be polite to people, I instinctively act civilized and this is where it gets me. But making that family’s tragedy into one more gossip topic… One step back, one unfriendly look and she finally stops touching my arm; but she still doesn’t stop spouting out religious nonsense. I don’t care about religion! I don’t go to church anymore! I believe each and every person is allowed to believe in whatever god they choose… or in no god at all. There, I’ve said it! And she is finally quiet. I can see it on her face – But she looked like such a nice woman… I was just trying to get to my car, she should have let me. Good day! And perhaps have some boundaries next time… or if not, respect those of others.