I’ve spent so many muddy hours wallowing in self-imposed guilt and shame over a million petty and self perceived infractions that when I reached my mid-twenties, I didn’t really know there were any other feelings to have about myself. I couched my guilt and shame in the political rhetoric of ‘accountability,’ which I mostly perverted into another tool to remind myself of what a fuck-up I was. I figured it was okay if I flagellated myself with accountability, because I had similar expectations of the other people in my life, and so long as everyone was getting the same shit kicked out of them, it felt justifiable as a community-building tool. Of course, in retrospect I can admit that I didn’t have a very comprehensive understanding of what accountability entailed, but I like to think I was on the right track.