Sometimes, Things Just Slide out of One's Control

About eight years ago, I realized that I am a control freak. I think, however, that my disease is a bit different from typical manifestations of the disorder. Most control freaks I have met need to assert control over the physical elements of their lives. They have a system for organizing the desks, sorting the mail and personal papers, storing their clothes, managing their daily calendar - that sort of thing.

My disorder is limited - and I apply the term somewhat facetiously - to control over my psychological environment. The desk may be messy and usually is. The laundry will get sorted at some point, and I do have a system for doing so, but I feel no sense of urgency toward completing that task. Ok, I do when I am running out of appropriate clothing for work or the gym, but generally, those types of tasks don't upset my emotional applecart.

I need to feel in control of the situations and the people around me. This malady is extremely troublesome because I am well aware of the fact that I am not in control of the situations or the people around me. I think sometimes I could go insane with only a gentle push.

Cases in point: I am all out of sorts today for a couple of reasons, and though I have been counseling myself on an intellectual level, my own words of wisdom are falling rather flat.

Yesterday at work, I was involved in a conflict where I was apparently failing to adequately take charge of an expected duty. I was caught off guard because I thought I was doing the expected thing. I won't go into details because they aren't germane to this discussion. I messed up; I was held responsible; I am internally pouting. Twenty-four hours later, despite great efforts to convince myself that, because I thought I was handling the situation as asked, there was nothing I could have done to avoid it. I must put it behind me, make certain not to repeat the error, and try my best to avoid similar mistakes in the future. I had no control over the change in psychological status, and I still feel emotionally as if I have placed my forehead on a baseball bat, spun around twenty times, then tried to run a forty yard dash.

Complicating the coping/recovery process is an accident that occured in my front yard at 3:30 am. A young man fell asleep at the wheel on his way home from college. He left the roadway in front of my house, came over a bank between the road and my driveway, ran into the car I am currently driving (though fortunately I wasn't doing so at the time), did a vehicular one and a half with at least a full twist, and landed upright in his car in a position that made it look as if he had parked behind my car.

In the process of doing this, he propelled my car, a small SUV about ten feet diagonally, so that it was sitting in my front yard, its rear end smashed into a young maple tree. The passenger side of both vehicles are about mid engine. Both cars are total losses.

I probably should have told you the driver is OK before now. He is fine. Maybe because he was asleep, and also because he had his seatbelt on and his aribags deployed, he came through a 60 mph collision with an SUV about twice the weight of his car with a few cuts. He probably received the cuts when he scrambled out of the car, came to my front door, and rang my ancient crank handle door bell, rousing the dog, my wife, and I in the wee hours.

He said, and I quote, "I fell asleep at the wheel. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I totaled my car, and the damage to your car is significant too."
How's that? The damage to my car is signficant!

What's significant is that he rang my doorbell after a crash like that.

But back to my malady. The car he totaled actually belongs to my daughter. We switched vehicles when she left for college so that she could drive the one with better gas mileage. The car once belonged to my daughter's friend's father, a loveable, opinionated guy with whom my family and I had a good relationship when the kids were little. We came into ownership of the car when he died - too young - after essentially drinking himself to death.

Of course, I know that I have/had no control over any of those things: the accident, the alcoholism, the intimely death. Yet this situaiton is adding to my distress, no matter how hard I work to provide self-therapy. I liked Pippy, whose name was George but whom I called Tom (all true), and every once in awhile I felt a little connection to him when I remembered that I was driving his truck. Nevertheless, I am out of control of my sense of well being. I am feeling loss with the destruction of a vehicle that had no special redeeeming features. It was a twelve year old SUV. I liked driving it, but it really wasn't a special thing, except that it reminded me of my friend once in a while.

Late this evening, I am sitting here typing this, hoping that by doing so I will regain my artificial equilibrium. I am not confident or optimistic - and that is really the source of the problem. I know that I haven't ever had control over things, but I work pretty hard to maintain the delusions that I do. I am therefore all befuddled because reality has swept in and unceremoniously stripped me of my fabrications, and now that same reality is standing in my living room laughing at me.

I tried to nap, but I didn't even have control over that. Tonight we must turn back the clocks, so that starting Monday I will go to work in the dark, and come home in the dark. The time of year weighs on me too.

Being a control freak isn't easy.