On Personal Responsibility

If you read The Dewyletter, you would know that I was supposed to be getting back to the blog and radio show in earnest this past month. Then I found out some news in my personal life that blindsided me and kept me from being able to freely access that usual, snarky yet funny tone I've spent years developing here.

Things are starting to go back to "normal", for what that's worth. But getting back to it has proven difficult. More difficult than it's really ever been. But I have a responsibility to my projects that seems to have more than enough pull to cause guilt.

In thinking about this topic, it's had me think about how I personally approach the concept of responsibility and things that are squarely in my court. As per usual, the answer is understanding trauma and its lasting effects on me.

Pictured: A visualization of trauma that I found on Pixabay. Fun!

One of the things that was true of how I grew up was a level of personal responsibility that bordered on abusive. And I got it from multiple angles.

For one, I was expected to act and conform to an adult standard of reasoning and behavior basically as soon as I could speak. I even remember one of my parents mentioning such an approach as an "innovation" and that it was amazing to have a kid that didn't act like a kid. They even made me write a paper about it in first or second grade.

Homeschooling is an interesting path, for certain, but its an incredibly isolating one. I don't think my parents wanted to do me a disservice by having me take that path, but I can't shake the feeling that they did, both at the time and in hindsight.

Many of my actions from a young age were surrounded by permanent consequences and no safety nets. As another example proving that this isn't just The Angst™, I grew up with firearms in the house and was required to use them as long as I can remember. One of my parents had a particular fixation on dangerous activities including rock climbing and such. I'm truly thankful I didn't accidentally kill anyone (or be killed). It was... closer than it should have been. But as part of assisting with the family's hunting and beef ranch, I was surrounded by reminders of life, its fleeting impermanence, and the bloody costs of preserving it. Something I found myself saying is that "I've had to stare death directly in the face so much I lost count of how many times it happened before puberty."

As a side effect of this... condition, I've had to bail out a number of so called "adults" on my journey in ways that I shouldn't have had to do so. As an example, when I was participating at a lock in with my church's youth ministry at, I think 14, there was a rattlesnake sighting. Did the adults deal with it? No. They came to me with a shovel and let me do their dirty work.

That does bring the spotlight over to church, which was my only other social outlet and the only place I could kind of... exist free of familial expectations. But being in very evangelical and fringe Christian spaces also compounded this whole "personal responsibility" issue, however.

As someone who has now studied religion and theology a bit more broadly, I do actually like certain things about this. I am a force in the world to be reckoned with and when I don't like something, I change it. Feel free to underestimate me. It always works out so well. (As a slight side note, being constantly underestimated has proved extremely boring. While I risk more by pumping myself up and being taken seriously, it's a lot more fun to have actual stakes than winning before I even get a chance to play. But I digress.)

When I was living in those spaces and they were all I knew? It felt like everything was my fault somehow. Either I wasn't trying hard enough or I was focused on the wrong things and that's why there was bad in the world. It was my, personal, fault. I suppose that's the theory of original sin in a nutshell. But again, it was kind of messed up how much I (a) internalized it and (b) was encouraged to do so.

Indeed, there's a weight that is placed on the individual in Christianity. A metaphorical one. I sometimes say that Christ's cross was literal so ours could be metaphorical, but that's a bit more in the nuance of my beliefs. For the purposes of this blog entry, suffice it to say that you bear that metaphorical cross your whole life. Parts of it I still carry, but I carry those by choice at this point. I've set down a lot of that weight and it's been liberating in a way that is hard to put into words.

Pictured: Well, not all followers of Christ are given a metaphorical cross. Some still got literal ones.

Looking at this in hindsight, I think that kind of spiritual paradigm needs to be balanced with a level of nihlism in order to not make the person go absolutely insane with guilt. But that was the fire I was raised in. I remember the world screaming at me in a way many will thankfully be spared from experiencing. Did you know my hometown's name literally translates to "City of Pain"?

That's a part of living through traumatic events. Posers believe that suffering is necessary because "they went through it and they're great so everyone should have to suffer." That's a surefire way of knowing someone didn't actually go through something truly terrible because once you cross that threhold, you'd never wish that on your own worst enemy, much less people you like or society at large.

I remember hearing a lot of "you'll understand when you have kids" growing up. But, now that I do, it's had the opposite effect. I want to ensure that my child has as much space to grow, be themselves, and be a child as possible. While my upbringing certainly made me into a harder individual who can do just about anything they set their mind to, there's got to be a better way.