Saying ‘NO’ - Emily Ra

Lately I’ve been up in the middle of the night asking myself…

How do I get really freakin’ good at saying NO?

And also, in tandem, how do I get really good at being told NO?

I feel like if we humans could learn to unweave our natural tendency to confuse boundaries with rejection, abandonment, or neglect, we’d be so much better off.

If criticism became an invitation for greater self reflection and thus, evolution, we’d think it would be welcomed and celebrated as a form of intimacy.

But this has been distorted by corporeal punishment and stress programs that have taught generations of people to fear both empathy and accountability.

It’s psycho, actually, how far this epidemic of NO fearing has spread.

Humans believe we should just have whatever we want, whenever we want it, and if it’s not how we want it, something is wrong and it must be controlled and corrected.

This leads to so much violence. This has caused rape of the land and one another.

This leads to the type of colonial entitlement that’s laid waste to the most beautiful landscapes in trade for radioactive dump sites and factory farms.

This has led to the type of thinking that makes it okay for someone to impulsively cross another’s personal threshold of space, in order to have an experience in their own body that they wish to have.

How do we get good and excited about our wonderful limitations?

When we look to nature, we see natural boundaries galore.

The water’s edge ends here. There’s only so much of this type of berry to eat. The beaver’s territory is right there. Apex predators manage populations. Storms clear the overgrowth.

It’s simple.

Our limitations protect us from moving beyond what is our capacity to fully hold and cherish.

They are blessings. Power is in what remains when all else that’s loose washes away.

Anyways, I wish my NO’s in life to be filled with excitement, curiosity, and respect, rather than the often downward spiral i see occurring when their spell is uttered.

I remember being at a tea night one time, and it would often get all cuddly puddly, people in big puppy piles on the floor and massaging each other here and there.

To be honest, It made me hella uncomfortable. Haha.

No offense to the people who find major nervous system regulation from such a thing but i personally find the energy to feel super leaky and confusing and i end up soaking up other people’s stuff and as someone who has ptsd being touched by a stranger immediately puts my whole body on alert.

Anyways, one time this very sweet mind you, soft and cuddly little pnw tea cherubim like friend with warm cheeks and a pillowy heart came up to me and was like ‘sigh, i’d love to cuddle right now’…hint hint…

I didn’t take the bait.

‘Would you want to cuddle with me?’ they asked eventually.

‘No.’ I said calmly and took another sip.

I didn’t smile. I didn’t frown.

I didn’t explain all the reasons why my nervous system felt frazzled and how i have touch boundaries with people i don’t know, or that i didn’t like the way they indirectly asked me or how I think cuddly puddly stuff feels leaky and makes me uncomfortable.

I just simply, lovingly and clearly said ‘No.’

If you could see their face!!!

It was if I turned into some kind of creature!

It was as if they’d never been ‘No’d’ quite that way before.

I’ll always remember.

We’re still dear friends.

When I think about it long enough, I love saying ‘NO’, actually.

Another time I was working at the coop/cafe. It was a minimum wage shitty job that i begrudgingly trudged to at sunrise from across the street in hopes of some extra tips during a very long Winter’s lockdown.

I loved that we had all organic and local foods and that I could cook whatever specials i wanted to invent. I could play whatever music I wanted on the sound system. I’d have quit the first day if not for that.

I wish the managers would have said ‘NO’ to a lot of the fuckery that made that business unorganized, unmanageable and most importantly uncommunicatewithable lol.

But I digress…

One day, a regular came up to the counter and asked to make a musical request.

Being that he came each day for his usual, and I’m open to exploring new music, I said sure. He had me put on a nice but albeit you anxious little techno number. He kept looking over at me to see if I was enjoying it or thought it was cool.

Yeah, bro. Cool.

(keeps wiping vegan mac sauce off table)

I could see how the elderly ladies drinking their electro-lemonade were getting nervous in the back. The vibes were a bit frenetic and forced, not like the usual casual mystical flow of Alice Coltrane or something that made the apples a bit sparklier on a rainy day vibe.

So, after the song was over I went back to the usual jams.

When then, the guy approached me again.

‘Hey. I have another request. Will you play this song next?’

‘No.’, I replied.

‘But, you just played my last song!’.

‘I know’, I said, ‘But you don’t have the power to choose the music here. I do. So it’s a No.’

He looked at me like I had just slapped him across the face with my mac soaked dishrag.

Lol. It was as if for a moment I shapeshifted into his disapproving mother, and he was a child who wasn’t allowed to watch his cartoons.

And yeah, maybe saying he didnt’ have power here was a little over the top, i admit.

But it was as if I’d taken away the one spell that had been cast on him since he was born as the privileged white american techy male that he was. The spell that told him that in fact he DID have the power here.

This is Amuricah.

Land of the Free.

Home of the Bad Techno.

Where you can roll around on the floor in an orgiastic frenzy with a bunch of half strangers you just met because you were touch deprived as a child as a result of the puritanical values passed down by your war traumatized grandparents.

Where you can make women bend to your anxious vibration because if they don’t you can financially or physically control them to do so anyways as you leverage your insecurity to put a bandaid on a fragile ego, rather than kneeling to her womb and offering your hand.

This is the place where the river down the road, the most accommodating being in this entire neighborhood, is the place where agro chemicals and literal human sewage is dumped into because their human voice was poisoned and given disease to also, left to be silenced on a reservation and called invisible even though we’re right here saying NO.

Ya know?

So what the f*?

What is up with that?

When did the patriarch get so rejected, so neglected, so abandoned, that he’s become allergic to NO? When did choosing to have empathy for another’s needs go out of style for humanity?

I think it has to do with self esteem, really.

If we’re insecure, we’ll assume that a boundary is a rejection of our worthiness.

It’s really hard to hear through an insecurity and go, okay. What need does this person have by expressing their ‘NO’ to me? Can I see how perhaps their boundary could be an attempt to keep peace with me, to continue a connection with me, or to care for our relationship in some way?

When I say NO, it’s about a need I have. It’s not about you.

So yeah. YEAH! YES.

The NO leads us to the YES!!!!

To the need. To the value.

For safety. For sovereignty. For respect.

+++

#algiz #suilo

Bonus Poem–

Do not mistake ferocity for violence.

She protects the vulnerable in silence.

For Peace to protect a cub’s weaning.

When a mother Bear knows her den’s threatened from dreaming.