January, 2022

15. Responsibility

Responsibility, false responsibility...
Can it be that responsibility is always false?
I will come to that question at the end of this story!

I always have felt responsible for people's emotions
Is the person beside me angry
It MUST be my fault
so I have to solve this
it's my job to get the other person over it
so he or she can be glad again

I know it sounds stupid
but I've always felt that guilt
and that responsibility
Somewhere somebody has give me that conviction
which is a deep emotional wound in itself

I came to a point that I knew in my mind this was all nonsense
But... how do I skip this feelings of being guilty?
And... how do I react, other than I was used to?

The feelings of being guilty are the result of deep emotional wounds
How I reacted has everything to do with that same wounds
I found myself unable to give a healthy response
and that made sense, in hindsight,
because I wasn't healthy emotionally...
Even a good way of responding didn't work
nothing seemed like a good way

Another way of feeling responsible,
is to know from the inside that you have to do what another has failed to do
that you have to clean up what someone else has left behind
Mentally I have known for years that this is nonsense
But I "had to"... I had to do this
tidying up, cleaning...
As I write this, I suspect that this is also part of the Cinderella syndrome that I wrote about earlier.

And... I felt responsible for everything that possibly possibly possibly could happen
I worked my ass off to avoid 
- that things would happen the wrong way
- that things would happen that were horrible, like accidents
- that things would happen that made it a mess
- that things would happen that would make other people feel bad

Through my emotional wounds I developed antennae to sense what could possibly happen
And I felt, that I always was the one that "had to" prevent anything from going wrong...

Can this be healed?
Last week my innerbeing was increasing pressure
All sort of things happened in my thoughts
I was frustrated with all sorts of things I couldn't do yet,

things whose underlying wounds had apparently not yet healed

I didn't sleep well, so I was tired
And to make it all worse...
I came to such a typical point that triggers an explosion...

I carefully (!) pulled the full drawer of our coffee machine out of the machine to empty it into the sink,
and... I spilled a good load of that waste water, which turned out to be under the drawer of the coffee machine,
I poured it over the outside of the chest of drawers under the coffee machine,
it even flowed into those drawers...
In short, it was a full mess!

I know things can always be worse, but for me it was the straw that broke the camel's back at that moment!

As I started to clean things up,
I felt deep emotions coming up in my belly
I can't remember crying
but I was angry,
angry with William because he still hadn't given the machine a "service" so that there was a ditch of water under the coffee machine, under the drawer

 

So I didn't mess with it myself,
it was his fault, he was guilty
And the moment I got there,
there at the word guilty,
I knew that the false sense of responsibility
resulted in accusation
Accusation of myself, accusation of others.
I had no idea why William hadn't "serviced" the machine

Knowing him very well, I know for sure he had a reason
It couldn't have been that he wasn't willing...
In the years since we started dating, he has done everything to love me, to heal me.
Sometimes unconsciously, but usually very consciously.
So willful negligence couldn't be the cause
It certainly couldn't have been intentional!
And yet... I blamed him...

When I noticed that, I got mad at myself
and... I blamed myself
The wounds that were touched inside of me
caused deep emotions
emotions I can't even describe
it was just a heavy ball of shit
and I knew that the best thing I could do was just getting through it, feeling it
The wounds were touched
not to bully me
but to heal those wounds

The result of this bit of process?

I don't know how to list results

I only know I feel a lot more free from this so-called responsibility

I only have to do what my soul tells me to do

that's enough

and that's freedom!

Finally, about the question I started with:

Can it be that responsibility is always false?

Is feeling responsible for whatever or whoever always a result of emotional wounds?

Can it be, that when we are totally healed inside
we perfectly are able to live from the inside out,
guided by our inner voice
not as slaves of our inner voice,
but just naturally...

Can it be, that when we are so totally healed
living by inner guidance had nothing to do with responsibility?

I think so...

To the index: Personal Healing Blog

To the next chapter: 16. Irritable bowel syndrome

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