My Toxic Girlfriend is Named Control
Spoiler Alert: It's seriously time we broke up.
The Wild Card
Late at night, my phone blows up with 10 missed calls from my family. Decently intoxicated, I scrunch up my face and furrow my brows before picking up the phone, devoting all my strength towards regaining motor control. I am surprised by my skill of honing in a sober tone over the phone, before hanging up and returning to slurred sentences. Though many of my peers often tease me for my lack of confidence in leaving my home for a bit of adventure suited for boisterous college students, I am always prepared to brag that this form of pressure rarely affects me, as the jarring possibility of consequences removed from my control crack down on me harder than any teasing ever could.
Control has always taunted me, contributing to my persistent lag in taking action. I am not selective about where I need to have control; in fact, I wish for it in the absolute form. Wanting total control is problematic on its own—I pull apart all aspects of my life, discovering new areas of uncertainty like hidden threads as the rope begins to fray. This itch can be beneficial at times. I, for example, avoid the use of many recreational substances more than most young adults due to my fear of both addiction and the loss of control over my psyche and physical being. More often than that, though, the need to have total control acts as a hemorrhage in my development.
Being in control mainly means reliable outcomes and the comfort of the known. At first glance, those two traits do not sound inherently harmful, but this need for control also prevents growth. Why even try to write something if it might be lackluster? Giving up is something I know how to do. Why try and meet new people when I have no promise of forging a truly perfect and deep connection with them? That’s enough justification to stay at home and moan into my pillow about my devastating sense of isolation. Why seriously analyze why I have not been able to improve my relationship with food? If I never do, I at least know my fate. Why give up hounding someone for an answer to their frustrating behavior? I need to be in control of the narrative.
The incessant need to hold on to a microbe-sized bit of control despite the harmful consequences that are bound to follow results from a history of deep insecurity. Control comes and goes like a toxic girlfriend, but you stick around because you think she is all you have. I gave up believing in my ability to adapt and grow, so I resort only to what I am entirely certain of. The irony behind the way this quirk of mine manifests itself is that by accepting a lack of growth over risk throws me into a larger limbo than the small roadbumps of progress ever could.
Late at night with no light to distract me as I float in a helpless bubble of indecision, anxiety permeates my skin in the very real form of cold sweat beads, when I suddenly realize–another empty day has passed. Consumed by both my crippling fear of death (the final mortal stage of zero control) and wholehearted disappointment, life has become relentlessly hopeless for this overly privileged 22-year-old. Despite comfortable material conditions, I feel totally doomed almost all of the time. Talk about first-world problems, right?
Distractions are essential in surviving the constant dissatisfaction. Often, I find this relief in socializing with those lucky few who have managed to hack away at the distance I forge between the outside world and myself. In those conversations, I catch myself ending on the need to ask them how they feel inside; are they just as lost as me? Despite the varying responses and the individuality of each person, I have found that many people in my generation deal with the same fears as I do.
Many of us who are still navigating young adulthood feel lost due to an accelerating desire for control as well as a persistently decreasing amount of control we can maintain over our own paths and our direct surroundings. We are currently stuck in an era of uncertainty, with the scale of instability never witnessed before in human history: the global economy is wobbling and at risk of total collapse, the possibility of another war grows larger with each passing second, no serious steps are being taken to protect us from the solidifying consequences of climate change, and the political and cultural trends took a sharp 180 degrees from relative progress and predictable change to polarized regression. If war is not evaded, or the current political path we seem set on does not reverse itself immediately, the damage humanity will face may be irreversible.
Even my most optimistic peers seem doubtful of what is to come. What is the point in making plans, in applying for that job overseas, or in imagining having a family one day? Something equally noteworthy of remembering is that despite this loss of control for those around me, many of the most underserved groups of society have been suffering from uncertainty far before I took my first breath. Their tragedy serves us as much as it should humble us–allowing oneself to be stuck in a loop of self-pity will result in a loss of original identity, and we would only be remembered for our bitter demise.
I hope to one day finally accept that the world will never rotate around me, and that–no–the universe probably doesn’t care about where I will land enough to intervene. Maybe I will fix all my most damaging behaviors, only for a bomb to immediately drop on my head. Maybe she’ll never text me back and tell me why she chose to leave. Maybe I’ll never be able to overcome something holding me back from achieving my dreams. The only way to dare to live a good life is to ignore all that can happen, and choose to believe that we are the main driving force in our lives. Whatever else follows is generally meaningless because we cannot control it.
The healthiest way to embrace the uncertainty we must all accept is to remain paradoxically rational and emotional. Humans have a unique ability to control their destinies: we avoid nature so successfully that we boastfully dub ourselves the crown of God’s creation. While we will always continue to progress and expand our well-being by pushing ourselves to make the impossible very possible, we need to accept that grief, tragedy, and horror are equally important parts of the human experience. We must give ourselves the time to cope with the uncontrollable, and we must teach each other to have the awareness and empathy for those who have even less control than us.
Here is the honest reality: I cannot be certain that I will change, but I can be certain that if I change, it will be because I decided to–because I took control. Believing I have control may lend me a more tangible sense of stability than simply succumbing to what is easy and predictable. We will all stumble around drunkenly throughout life, no matter what age. Our best hope is that, when it counts most, we can scrunch our faces, furrow our brows, and see what's in front of us before it floats away.
