It is the times when we try everything to exert the most control, that we are in truth, the most out of control.
In the last three days of immersive study in cognitive behavior techniques, one constant has emerged in that for the better part of my life, I've tried to maintain a stranglehold on it by trying to control as much as I can, be it people, opportunities, or even time itself, that I've been in a state of perpetual emotional instability that has just gotten worse as the years ticked away.
It's like pushing against a mountain in the hopes that if I did it long enough, I could stop the world from turning.
This is especially true when it comes to the people in my life. Growing up in a home where I moved seven times in eight years, I was constantly in a situation where I was having to start over in terms of making friends, building relationships and getting used to new surroundings and for a kid, that can be a tall order. I didn't have time to build any sort of long-term friendships because by the end of the year I was in a new town, starting a new school and repeating the process from square one.
It also didn't help having so much instability at home, going through two divorces before being sent cross-country. Even though I wasn't even a teenager yet, I was desperate for any form of stability and thereby knowing I had some measure of control over my life. As you get older, though, the problem arises in when it's time to start creating potential long-term relationships, especially with those people you develop loving affections for, and the process of asserting control over it so you can feel secure in those relationships is not healthy.
As I said before, I have been in situations where I can say I was truly, passionately in love with a woman three times. And each time I not only sabotaged any potential for a relationship at the outset, but I also altered their perceptions of me so much that I went from being a friend to a potential enemy, even though it was never my intention to make any of them see me as such.
But I wanted control. I wanted to be able to know in my mind that I had created the world I wanted for myself in which I was appreciated, loved, and valued and that obsessive need to maintain control permeated not only throughout what I hoped for romantically, but also the rest of my social life as well as how I handled work and the things around me which I have absolutely no control over.
One of the reasons why my marriage ultimately was doomed to fail from the very start was I conceded that control to someone who was as obsessive about maintaining control as I was, and in that aspect, I was hamstrung from being able to develop into the person I wanted to be because I became a square peg that was now being forced into an octagonal hole.
And when I exerted a measure of healthy control over myself by making decisions to better my life for our mutual benefit, I took it out of my ex-wife's hands and combined with her inherent insecurities and fear that she could lose me at any moment, the outcome became sadly inevitable. The impact of which sent me more out of control than I think I've ever been in my life, and in trying to stop myself from the freefall I was now in, I overcompensated so much that it cost me a great deal more in the process.
Feeling so mentally and emotionally out of control like that is horrifying. You spend all day hoping that no one will see the blemishes and faults you carry with you and through sheer force of will, you can make them only focus on the few good things you see in yourself, even though to you, those things have almost no intrinsic value to speak of.
But I can't control people, nor do I want to. The only way I can have any measure of control over what you think and feel about me as a fellow human being is letting you see all aspects of who I am, which ultimately means I have to yield a great measure of that control to you. It's a nerve-wracking process, but ultimately, that is what builds trust, understanding and ultimately, mutual healthy love.
I genuinely wonder how much different my life would be if I'd had the strength to do that a lot sooner.
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