Responsibility = Freedom

@drrune recently commented on my previous post, "I've personally learned that Responsibility = Freedom. May you always be given the space to hold yourself accountable and answer to no other person on the face of this earth, ever again!"

And this deeply resonated with me. My parents wanted me to be responsible to them, rather than myself. My parents wanted me to be responsible to capitalism, rather than community. And my parents are only people, americans, boomers, and reverberating concepts of blame they believed to be accountability. Can I blame them?

During my journey of self discovery, I deeply despised responding to others commands on events that they were not present for -- how was this solving anything? What was this teaching me? For years, I believed others could have more insight on my life than I could ever have on it.

I looked to others,
"What do I say?"
"How do I say this?"
"How does this come across?"
"Am I doing this right?"
"Am I doing this wrong?"

And I was miserable, where was my voice? I was seen by my parents as untrustworthy. And then I internalized that belief about my own body, about my own memories, about my own self. I only felt believable if others agreed with me; and this is no way to live. I absorbed projections of others to survive the institutions and then I began living that way by choice.

And I wanted to die, and could not figure out why?

Didn't I have it all? Didn't others think I was smart? Didn't others think well of me? Didn't other like me enough? Wasn't I in graduate school about to become a doctor with my own private practice one day? Wasn't I doing what I wanted?

wasn't i doing what i wanted?
wasn't i doing what i wanted?
wasn't i doing what i wanted?

No. I was doing what others wanted, I was living my life for others to admire rather than my own self in the mirror. I was not happy, even when I seemed to be almost at the top of the mountain. I turned around and climbed back down because what I wanted was not up that hill. What I wanted was inside of me, and I tried to revive that part of me -- the part which I had been unresponsive towards in order to extend myself better towards others.

I had to give myself space for that accountability for the past few years, and it is still a journey forwards. The insides of myself needed tending, my soul needed time to heal, and I had to begin listening to myself and answering my own questions.

My content online is going to go through a revival; I desire to make my sentences more concise, and to understand what I am attempting to say so I can find the word that rise from the inside out. And that takes time and space, and lots of blog entries on HIVE.

The whole concept of responsibility and accountability is personal. And that's where one finds the power to be themselves and to express themselves genuinely and authentically.

For a long time, the word responsibility made me feel trapped.
And today, it makes me feel alive.

And free.

I learned that when I became a mom, and thinking about what my child would say their parents taught them. I hope to teach them the power of responsibility too, just maybe not in the same way my parents did.

<3