Accountability
From the Threadwalker's desk / 9.25.25
I talked a little about accountability already in my previous piece.
Today I want to press deeper — what is accountability? What does it look like in love? How do we forgive ourselves for mistakes that scar the people we love most, and how do we begin to rebuild trust?
I come from a lifetime of complex trauma and abuse in many forms. For years I believed the world owed me something — if not everything.
I never thought of myself as narcissistic; in truth, the thought terrified me. Both my parents carried those traits. And yet now I see: every person carries a streak of it. How could we not, in a world of instant gratification and main-character energy? The culture chants: put yourself first, no matter what.
Being an 80’s baby, I still had the gift of an analog childhood — playing outside until dusk, getting lost in woods and fields, filthy with pond water and ditch mud. I grew up in a small Dutch town where everyone knew each other’s name, where gossip spread like fire in dry grass. Sometimes I miss those days when life was slower, simpler, uncurated.
The shift came when I discovered online chatrooms and forums. Suddenly the world tilted, and the focus turned inward. I could be anyone I wasn’t — even when it wasn’t true.
Layer that over a household of chaos, and something in me bent. A narcissistic streak rooted itself quietly. Nobody seemed to notice how I was drowning, so I made everything about me. Not in malice, but in survival.
Still, love mattered most. Perhaps the only reason I didn’t vanish completely into self. I cared — to the point of agony. And yet it always circled back: Am I the problem? Did I hurt them? Am I too much? Too strong?
That, too, is its own form of narcissism. The loop where everything points back to me.
I see now how many I have hurt. How many I blamed for abandoning me, when really I was the one who cut the threads first. I lashed out, disappeared, pushed away — convinced they had already left me in their hearts. I was only making the break “cleaner.”
These patterns calcified into my character: the urge to check out when the weight was too much, to slip into nonexistence.
Existential dread became my daily companion, and I longed for “more” — not realizing I was weaving my own shroud of grief and despair.
At that depth, you can no longer see the people right in front of you, the ones who love you beyond words. And I went beyond that depth. I lost a love I never thought could be lost. I chose selfishness and fantasy over years of sweat-earned devotion. I got stuck in lives that were already over, trying to rewrite what should have been left buried.
That is the opposite of accountability. That is irresponsibility.
I told myself I was the one always hurting, always sacrificing, always the victim. Meanwhile, I could not see how much my wife carried — the endless sacrifices, the years of holding our roof steady while I stumbled from job to job. I told myself the world was against me, that poverty was my fate, that inequality was all I’d ever know. And so I placed the burden onto her, onto anyone but me.
Because it is easier, isn’t it? Easier to resign, to sulk into destiny, than to rise and take hold of your own life.
The books were my first steps toward redemption, but only small ones.
Now, I am beginning to leap.
I am growing up — maturing in a way I once thought impossible. I refuse to accept any limit I or anyone else tries to press upon my life. And in that, I have learned what accountability really is.
It is maturity: taking responsibility for every choice, no matter how broken, and accepting the consequences.
In love, accountability is not surrendering in defeat. It is stepping up. It is choosing to stay curious when it would be easier to turn cold. It is listening without defense, even when the words sting. It is seeing not just the wound in myself, but the wounds others carry from lives before me.
Only then can forgiveness take root. Only then can trust be rebuilt. Not only with our beloveds, but with our own selves.
And all I hope for now is that the love between my wife and me has not fully withered. That somewhere deep beneath the soil, the roots remain tangled, still unwilling to let go.
Yes, I choose myself. But I choose her, too.
Because I have learned: there is no perfect partner. Love is labor — holy labor. And she is the only one I want to labor for. She is the mirror I both dread and need, the reflection that burns and heals.
Maybe this is the essence of accountability: not perfection, but willingness. The willingness to keep showing up, to keep learning, to keep choosing love even when it terrifies us. To stand before the mirror, see both the wreckage and the wonder, and not look away.
This is where I begin again.
— Alex
Threadwalker