I have a confession to make: I’m obsessed with the messy pile of stuff on my fiancé’s nightstand. To a casual observer, it is an inconspicuous little heap, consisting of a few books that he has been reading for the pas six months, a stack of papers and letters (junk mail included), topped with a bunch of business cards from people he’ll never speak to again. (What can I say? The Gen X-er who clearly needs a Rolodex.) To me, however, it is a vile offense of the pristine order of our household that I think about every time I enter our otherwise immaculate bedroom – and that continues to haunt me even when I pointedly ignore it and start frantically tidying up the rest of the house in an effort to compensate. (To my fiancé, it’s a sacred shrine to his lost independence, but that’s beside the point.)
The Pile is not the only thing bothering me at the moment. Other things that are constantly interrupting my peace of mind include but are not limited to: my messy t-shirt drawers, a cupboard door that’s off the hinge, a few returns that need to be shipped, my unfinished work projects, the last three pounds I’ve been trying to lose for a month with no avail (“what you resist, persists”). It’s a game of mental whack-a-mole, in which the moles are items on my to-do list and the hammer is clearly defunct.
You don’t need a psych degree to figure out that I have a control issue, tinted by a hefty dose of OCD. In fact, I think my toddler could probably diagnose me. Speaking of which, it’s fascinating to observe how much her (age-appropriate) controlling toddler behavior resembles my (less age-appropriate) own: everything must be in its place, no crayon can break or fall, no drawer can be left open, Mommy can’t be wearing her going out clothes because that means she might leave… At two years old, she wants her world exactly the way she wants it, because she is still struggling to understand it.
Perhaps, that’s a clue?
Like most fellow neurotics, my need to control my environment has been with me for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I derived acute pleasure from organizing all my tween trinkets and color-coding my 700 Babysitters Club books and laying out my outfits the night before – traits that earned me praise from my parents, up until the point when I decided to lose some weight before 7th grade and stopped eating almost entirely altogether. The crisis was mitigated and I quickly returned to food, and eventually also picked up some new interests – friends and boys and tequila shots chugged en route to “teen night” at the local club – that threw me off the Type A track for a good ten years. I’ll spare you the debaucherous details, but let’s just say that the 20-year old me had no issue sleeping in what may have been an NYU squatter commune on Thompson Street and waddling into my Interview Magazine internship with a cigarette and a Red Bull the next morning (to my credit, everybody there was always hungover). The anxiety I had managed through meticulous order as a child was now tackled through a slew of bad habits, one more self-destructive than the next.
Sometimes, a person simply grows tired of being a hot mess, so, at some point in my mid-twenties, I began to get my sh*t together. I cleaned my room at my parents’ house. I established a schedule. I began strengthening the muscle of hard work and discipline, which, in turn, got me towards my goals – my first job, a Parisian grad school, a French agency job, a functional career as a copywriter, a published book author. The only problem was, the little anxiety monster on my shoulder who was still there – lingering and watching and hardening the ground rules for how “we” would effectively navigate through life. With each year, it grew more and more controlling, attempting to govern through extensive to-do lists and strict food limitations and plans skipped in favor of staying home and ticking off the boxes. Even while living in Europe, I didn’t entirely “lean in” – even though I knew my time there was limited, rarely did I enjoy a full weekend of doing n’importe quoi, or skip my workout in favor of a croissant from the bakery downstairs. Ironically, my “brand” as a writer was that of a freedom-seeking vagabond – and yet, I was constantly grinding away at myself on the inside.
Then came motherhood. They tell you that having a child is the ultimate loss of control – and, in a way, it is. After all, children are, by definition, independent beings who come into the world to reject all your ideas of who they should be and wave their middle finger at your desire to control them. On a day-to-day level, they are also loose cannons: between the erratic sleep schedules and the viruses and the tantrums, most of your plans are always subject to going down the drain, which should make you just give up and surrender to the mayhem. And yet, this too can have the reverse effect. Ever since my daughter was born, I’ve actually found myself becoming even more regimented, building up this tightly controlled environment in which all the weekend trips are planned in advance, the house has no trace of rambunctious toddler after sundown, and I’m usually in bed by 10pm in anticipation of the 5am wakeup. The more I manage to exercise authority over my little bubble, the more content I am with myself, as though I have somehow “won” over the invisible enemy that is chaos. But, the question is, what am I really winning here?
I am far from alone. In fact, there is abundant data that explains why women are so hard on themselves, the key one being the people-pleasing mentality that is instilled in us from a young age. While boys are consistently scolded and reprimanded and “toughened up,” girls are generally praised for being “good,” which leads to us continuously seeking approval throughout our lives. (An interesting aspect to consider in parenting, especially when raising girls.) This desire to be “perfect” is what leads to our mounting inner pressures to look a certain way, to get everything done, to be a perfect mother and partner, to always please and never disappoint. Paradoxically, it often ends up doing us a disservice, because being scared of making the “wrong” move can stall us in making any move at all. I can see this so clearly in my own life: if I wasn’t so fixated with “finessing” a TV proposal I’m working on, I would be out there pitching it; if I wasn’t obsessed with finding the “perfect” outfit, I wouldn’t be a frantic ten minutes late everywhere I go; if I wasn’t always tidying up the house, I would be playing with my daughter more.
I was doing a preparation questionnaire for a personal growth program I’m doing (yes, I am on a very LA “journey” here – and, if you don’t judge me, I’ll report back!) and one question was about negative-self talk, and what it robs me of in my life, and what would I be doing if it were not for my negative self-talk. ” My own answer saddened me. “My negative self-talk can make me very regimented, anxious and rigid. I think I would probably be more relaxed in my day-to-day life if I wasn't continuously trying to check off my to-do list. I would make more social plans and enjoy life more. I would also enjoy food a lot more and wouldn't find myself restricting my calories in order to be a certain size.” While re-reading this, I suddenly saw myself years from now, looking back at my life and experiencing this exact same sentiment – only, by then, in a more finite, irreversible way.
Sometimes, the most liberating thing can be to acknowledge our own insignificance. To remember that the control we try to exercise over our lives is merely an illusion, a flimsy little house of cards that can collapse at any moment, for we are all living in micro versions of the Matrix where the authority doesn’t actually belong to us. No matter how perfect or orderly your life can seem, the reality is that it can collapse at any second – when a car turns the wrong way, or a pandemic freezes us in time for two years, or a tyrant decides to wage a war against its neighbor, or Anushka spills oil on the train tracks. There is no point of wasting all your energy trying to control all your elements, because you are not fully writing your story. Also, nobody aside from you is actually keeping score.
I’m not suggesting that we all quit our lives and move to Bali tomorrow (although, that does sound fantastic). All I’m advocating here is a slight change in perspective, before we find ourselves wasting too many years trapped into a cycle that is preventing us from – cliché of clichés – enjoying life’s “simple pleasures” – an evening of sharing a bottle of wine and doing absolutely nothing, our languid Sunday mornings with our kids, that slice of cake at a party. Speaking of kids, now that my daughter is talking (make that yapping my ear off – she takes after her dad), it is fascinating for me to witness how much of her attention goes into narrating the smallest things around her, things that I have grown conditioned to ignore. The avocado that fell off the tree onto the sidewalk, the music fountain show at the Grove, the moon shining brightly in the evening sky (she calls it a “MUNA”)... It is through her raw excitement that I am struck by how much this world has to offer on a consistent basis. My life is happening right now – not tomorrow or a year from now or one utopian day when my to-do list is checked off and everything is suddenly “perfect” – but today. Now, I just need to slow down and enjoy it.
I really enjoyed your writing here. So much I relate to, in regards to recognising and letting go of control!
Very well written and honest. Thank you for sharing the inner workings of your mind.