“A boundary I only enforce when I'm already upset isn't a boundary. It's a warning I keep forgetting to send.”

For a long time mine only appeared at the end of a bad week, which meant they arrived sounding like accusations and got treated like moods. Said calmly on an ordinary Tuesday, the same sentence is just information: here is what does not work for me. Said at eleven at night after the third cancelled plan, it is a scene.

The content was never the problem. The timing made it look like an argument I was trying to win rather than a line I had already drawn. They hold much better when nobody is upset yet, which is exactly when they feel least necessary.