“I am responsible, but not in control!”
Isn’t that an oxymoron? How can you be responsible for something you don’t control?
That is what happens when you feel responsible for another’s behavior or action or inaction even. You feel responsible, yet unable to control them!
As a little girl in my childhood home, this is exactly how I felt, that I was responsible yet not in control.
It is like being responsible to stop a waterfall half way down, knowing those who will get hurt below as the water falls from above, yet unable to stop it.
The parents at the top keep dumping stuff over the falls, and it rains upon us all. Instead of being down on the bottom, I stood mid way, trying to stop the rain!
As a child and then an adult child I carried this hopeless responsibility and made it my life’s work.
This job was so time consuming, it kept me from my own life, but firmly into yours racing between your behavior and the affects.
Since it never really stopped the abuse and neglect, this midway kinda sorta life I lived was all for naught.
The only way you can stop abuse from raining down is to stop the man at the top of the falls, or get the children out of the way.
Neither happened in our family.
Somehow the children in the falls believe it is their responsibility to stop the top, to work harder, be better, do better so this bad behavior wouldn’t fall down upon them.
Little do they know they are not the cause, just the ones who get rained upon, the residual collateral damage.
This collateral damage then sets forth in life trying to control things that are impossible to control and giving responsibility for their happiness to others.
A life set in motion without control, just like a flimsy doll in the rush of Niagara Falls.
It is only when you can separate this all out and put control and responsibility where it belongs do the falls turn into a millpond.
A millpond, which emotions pass through, ripples arise now and again, and settle back to peace.
I M Perfect lady 