Lately I have been helped a great deal in learning about boundaries. I was recalling some of my past relationships with other people that were incredibly harmful to me and I have found that a lot of this came from the lack of boundaries in the actual relationships. As I described how I had come to feel in the relationship, I was reminded of a story I read a long time ago, it was called something like "Prince Gorgom" (at least I think that's the word. The problem is that I know it was an unfamiliar monster word and it reminded me of 'mormon' and it wasn't, as far as I know, 'gorgon') and it goes like this:
So there was this queen who suffered the tragedy of tragedies for women at that time: she was unable to have children. Since I imagine this in my head as part of a sermon, it's easy now to think of all of the great women of the early bible who were unable to have children at the beginnings of their story. I can go on to point out that a great deal of trouble arose when they took the matters into their own hands without calling on God. It was those who obeyed God regarding their future children that had, well, a much better outcome, in the end.
So in the same spirit as that of several biblical women, this queen in the story I am telling decided she needed to find a solution to her infertility. She didn't call in a handmaid or laugh at a prophesy, though. She sought out a women who was probably a sorceress or something. This woman advised the queen to eat two onions. She either gave them to the queen or instructed the queen to go get them. I'm going to assume for the sake of logic that there had to be some designation on these onions to set them apart as the correct onions, because their use as the treatment to the queen's ailment were anomalous, so there must have been something special about them. Anyway, the final goal was for the woman to eat these two wonderful onions and then she would have some awesome kids, and maybe she was even promised sons. The important detail, however, to the eating of the onions. The queen needed to peel them first.
Well, when the time came to eat them the queen forgot and downed the first onion as it was. Then she remembered and carefully peeled the second and ate it.
well, of course failing to follow the instructions usually brings about undesirable consequences. The queen did get pregnant and there were no complications that anyone noticed. Then is was time to deliver.
The midwife discovered that the child was really a type of dragon-snake-monster that sounds something like 'mormon.' The midwife did the sensible thing and tossed the infant out the window. Fortunately, there was a second, perfectly normal child following him, and the midwife never had to tell anyone about the minor complication of the first child being a frightful monster.
SO, the queen was happy she had a son and all that and he grew up and he was a great guy and he was going to get married.
But then this monster showed up and plagued the town the way that monsters do. He was kind enough to explain himself, stating that he would not allow the dashing prince to get married until he himself could get married. This makes sense to anyone who by now must have gathered that this monster is the prince's long lost, discarded older brother, and of course the older has to marry before the younger.
So a quest was set out to find a woman to marry the dragon so the prince and heir of the little country or whatever could get married.
Applicants ran out pretty quickly because, being a monster, the dragon kept killing the brides on the wedding nights, effectively annulling each union before it had begun. Still, though, the dragon insisted he had to get married.
Well, fortunately, a smart girl came along. She married the dragon and either she consulted someone who told her the secret or she figured it out on her own. When the big moment came, she was severely overdressed. She had seven or fourteen long shirts on, according to the story. In the illustration that goes with the story, they look like thin night-gowns.
So the dragon asks his wife to undress. She tells him he has to undress, as well. Since he's a dragon or a snake, that entails shedding a later of skin, so he does, and his wife then takes off one of her shirts.
So he asks her to undress again, since she has a great deal further to go before business can continue, and she again responds that he has to undress, too. So he takes off another layer of monster skin.
So, as expected, by the time the woman is naked, so is the snake, who, as it turns out is really a nice guy under all that monster skin, literally. Out of the final layer of skin comes, of course, another prince who looks exactly like his brother, only a little bit older and thus the real heir. So the wife sheds the last layer of clothes and, well, that's it. She officially is married to the older prince, so the younger prince can get married. More importantly, the dragon can no longer plague the are because he's no longer a monster and he now has much better things to do.
Anyway, I think the most important part of this story is the part about the wife's preparedness to contend with the dragon once she marries him. It's an example of boundaries. It's a great showing of carefulness. I think it is highly significant that she starts out no more vulnerable than the dragon as concerns number of layers, and that she doesn't make herself more vulnerable unless he does the same.
I learned a lot from thinking about this as a metaphor for relationship because a lot of harm I have suffered in relationship has come from being vulnerable to people who were not themselves vulnerable, just as the first few brides of the monster went in without adequate protection and were killed.
That actual connection I made between my life and this story came when I was writing down how I felt about a recent season in my life and particular friends who for a long time broke my heart and made me feel completely unvalued even though on the surface they did not appear to be doing anything wrong. I described the relationship as feeling like I was naked and locked outside. I was completely vulnerable and exposed and even frightened, and yet my friends were completely covered, protected and even sheltered in all of the ways that I was not. From this image I then made the connection to a variation of the dragon story in which the woman runs out of layers before the dragon does and thus is stuck, totally exposed, in a room with a monster until he takes of the last skin and turns out to be human. I felt is was a similar fear, of being completely unprotected and potentially ashamed and likely to be hurt in some way, but while her fear lasted only a moment, mine endured for about seven months, to varying degrees. Now it's been a year since the last part of the ordeal started. Now I can see a lot of how I got so badly damaged.
So the wisdom I can see from the story and from my life is the importance of saving layers when dealing with dragons. Any relationship needs to have equality of vulnerability, or someone, the one with less clothes on, is in danger.
So the important this is never to overdo the loss of layers with someone and especially that women should never become vulnerable to men very quickly, because men are generally serpentine and do a lot of harm they don't even intend to do. The men with which I dealt were snakes in that way and they had no idea they were killing me With them I was not careful. I trusted them way too much, told them too much, sacrificed too much, and compromised too much without reciprocation. For months I ended up with the feeling of being killed by my friends and couldn't explain why. It's too bad. But it's over now.
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