About a month and… some change ago, I decided to order the Yuffie Kisaragi cape (what would you call this, anyway? a cape?) from AUScosplay. I knew that it would take about a month to get here, and I didn’t mind that because of how far out in advance I was intentionally placing the order. I wanted something that would cover me, and my arms and upper body, so that we could record video of us playing MMORPGs and video games without people becoming concerned about errant bruises left on me by accident from Bub’s meltdowns, and I figured that if I were wearing something stylish — something that I liked and wanted to wear anyway, were I to own it — it would cover those marks up without question. And it looked really nice.

So I patiently waited a month, hoping along the way that at some point AUScosplay would send me an e-mail with tracking or… well, actually ship the thing. But I got absolutely nothing from them at any point in the process. I sent several civil, polite e-mails inquiring about the status of my order and not a single e-mail was ever responded to. That rose several serious questions as to whether or not I would even get the item.

When the month mark came and gone and still no cape, I filed a complaint with PayPal since I had gone through them, indicating that I had not gotten what I had ordered and that I would like my money back since it had already been a month. They told me that I would have to wait until early November for a decision, but miraculously decided entirely in my favor three days into that, and I was refunded the full cost. I’m thinking that they might have done this to more than one person because of how quickly PayPal ruled in my favor…

There were certain people that I considered friends on Discord who, for lack of a better way to put it, decided to intrude into my personal life in spite of being told not to… so it wasn’t even as though this was remotely blatant. Prior to this, they had been friends of mine. However, it got me to thinking — what is the line when it comes to situations like this? In the past, friends of mine have told me that perhaps I can be a bit too friendly for the sake of being nice to people and maintaining friendships, even when I shouldn’t. I’ve also been told by friends of mine that sometimes I put up with a lot more than I should, even (and especially!) when I shouldn’t, and that it is well within my rights to assert boundaries by stating that I am no longer willing to put up with people who would do this to me. For the sake of maintaining professional decorum, I will not actively seek these people out on the server that we are on, and I will be civil to them. That does not mean that I need to be polite or friendly, though. I can manage “not being cruel or mean to you but not being your friend” alright.

I have gotten, and am getting, more support for this than I realize, and I am thankful for it. Furthermore, it incentivizes me to continue to draw these boundaries as necessary for my own mental health. If someone with a history of domestic violence and sexual assault is exhibiting that what you are saying by virtue of your intrusion into their personal life really uncomfortable, you need to stop — one of them knew both of these things for a fact and the other one was probably told. You don’t get to claim that “someone is having a bad mental health day” if you caused it. I am sick and tired of being “so friendly” that I become people’s punching bag, especially if it is out of distress that I suddenly become a friendly people-pleaser in conversations. If you do this to me, know that you have not just intruded on my boundaries, you have violated them, and I will not want to be friendly or polite to you for awhile. Click send. Do the posting thing.