Boundaries

I have eleven minutes before my sons' babysitter leaves, and thought I'd ruminate for a moment. I spent today working on my math skills, very rusty indeed, for the GRE (for a career change, more on that to come). I took it last almost 16 years ago--YIKES--and after going to graduate school in the humanities, it's taking quite a bit to get the gears cranking again. I can do all the problems, but I'm excruciatingly slow, something that must be remedied in five weeks, if possible. I feel as though fences have been erected in my head that separate off all my mathematical mental agility, and it takes an overwhelming amount of effort to get over those walls.

On the other hand, I am frothing and seething inside because I am unable or incompetent where it comes to setting boundaries between myself and others. Most of the time this doesn't matter too much, but then there are those who take advantage of my softness (because I let them, of course), and I get out-of-proportion mad once I hit a certain zone. One particular person has been annoying me greatly of late, and I feel such tremendous guilt about putting up a boundary, and yet if I don't, I'll go bananas. My guilt is two-fold: one level is because I hate letting people down (damn that "need-to-please" side of myself), and one level is because the person who's annoying me is developmentally disabled. I just can't take being her dumping zone for the little that goes on in her life. It's too much. I've told her this, and given her more chances than I should have, but nothing has changed. Hence I am helping both her and myself by cutting things off, but it's SOOOO aggravating to have someone call and leave messages four or more times a day. I don't even pick up my phone anymore because I don't want to reward her persistence. Am I bad? No. But it's really hard to let go of the guilt.