day54 - control, balance, (in)sanity

05 Apr, 2025

dear luci,

forgive me if I'm repeating myself. you write fifty of these and you're liable to do that.

I have always been preoccupied with the idea of control. my worst nightmares usually place me in situations where I have an inherent lack of control: getting on the wrong train and being unable to disembark, being chased by someone or something near unstoppable, or just the simple "I don't want you anymore" from some of my best friends.

pathologize it all you like, trace it back to some crack in the foundation, structural instability, type-a personality, it's all the same outcome. the version of myself I present in relationships¹ is a thin veil of confidence and indifference, beneath which lies a very scared, very lonely person. sometimes I get to shed that veil, allow myself to be cared for as I desperately crave, but rarely enough. like a petulant child, sometimes you gotta let her win if you want to keep the peace. at least, that's the very demanding, weak conception of myself I have. control is like a drug, and I do what I can to remind myself that I have it. often that's when/why/how(?) the flirty side of me comes out. I don't want to control other people, it's just the knowledge that I exist, I can do good things for people. make them laugh, make them happy, etc.

a lot of my life has been underpinned by my slow but persistent journey to remind myself that I don't need to be in control all the time. it started in group therapy. if I felt like a spinning top with no say over where I go and what I do, these people looked like cyclones. I was relatively self aware, in control and measured- in comparison to them. I was the Grade A therapy student, graduating summa cum laude with a major in Emotional Effectiveness. I finished the program and they told me I no longer displayed symptoms which fit my diagnostic criteria. in other words: I was cured!

I don't know why they entertained that idea, that a self-scored test that is thoroughly dependant on the mindset you're in when you're filling it out, could be any substantive marker of long-term mental health.

but I wasn't cured, predictably. I'm still a control freak. I still need my hands on the keyboard because it's easier if I do it rather than show you how. I'm still incredibly embarrassed when faced with ideas and concepts I don't understand. My blood still boils with shame when I am corrected, rightfully put in my place. I still can't do things in front of people if I don't think I'm "good enough" at them yet. how do I seem to believe I'm simultaneously superior and inferior to the average person?

but I keep trying. life isn't about control, some of its sweetest and bitterest fruits fall from the tree of "pure fucking chance". getting better at not being like that is less about punishing yourself from being intense. it's more about learning what you do and do not have control over, and what's more, when you should and should not engage with the impulse to control said things. it's a balance. it's sitting on a chair on the edge of a boat, rocking back and forth.

"While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water—laughing at the girl, the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider and the service-station guys and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy."

— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Sweet dreams, Luci<3 💜💛

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