People I'm close to, who know me well, all eventually start asking me "Why do you take so much responsibility for others? What they choose is not your fault, they're not your responsibility." I can never answer in a way that makes sense to any of us. I just feel responsible and I don't know why.
I think I figured out why today. I had to help raise my siblings from the time I was 12 to age 17. I had no idea how to do that. I never understood children, even when I was one. I was an immensely socially backwards person when I was young. But my mother paid me to take care of my younger brother and sister. I was never paid to take care of myself, of course.
I was raised to believe that whatever you were paid to do, you had to do to the best of your ability. My ability to take care of children at that age was next to nothing, probably less than lots of other people my age. But I did my damndest, and even when I threw a fit and didn't get the cleaning finished or failed at some other duty I felt bad about it. I always felt that what was being asked of me was unfair, but I was being paid to do it, therefore I was responsible. As if this was a normal job, that I had chosen to do.
So I have had a longstanding belief that it doesn't matter that other people don't think it's reasonable for me to feel responsible for others. They just didn't know that reasonable doesn't count for much in "real life". It was our duty to take care of others who clearly couldn't take care of themselves. Or at least, wouldn't make the choice to take care of themselves. Who behaved like children. And if other people couldn't see that, they were just blind. Weren't they?
No, and then again, yes. Because I truly do believe that we all should be taking care of each other. What that inevitably seemed to lead to was me living with people who would see me being willing to provide care, and just letting me do it. All of it. Providing every bit of care that I could squeeze out, and only occasionally being able to say "hey, it's YOUR turn now," which never worked because it always came out angry, which I felt bad about, and apologized for, and things just returned to the status quo.
I think this is the first time I've clearly seen what caused me to go in that direction. Although I don't know how far reaching this has been in my life yet, I get the feeling that this may be one of those big underlying issues that affected almost everything. Probably there are one or two layers underneath it that have greater affect and led to me adopting this stance in the first place. But it is such a relief to have this out in the open and under my eye. This means that as long as I can see it and am trying to work through it, I can get to those deeper layers, rather than just having them sitting under a huge emotional concrete slab. And I am always ready to learn and grow.
I am not obligated to provide care for others, nor to care for others. I am particularly not obligated to do so at cost to myself. Which is reasonable not only in and of itself, but also within my view of the world; I do care for others, immensely, innately. But if I provide that care at the cost of caring for myself then I become crippled and unable to do anything for anyone. This is a thing to remember, a thing that I must know and feel, and not lose sight of.
