control
I've been thinking a lot about control lately--mostly my lack of it when it comes to my own life. Years ago, when my 35 year old fiance died in a freak accident, I thought I had realized the futility of attempting to control and order my life and the lives of those around me, that I had learned that none of us has any real control over the things that happen, that our only control is over our reactions to the events of our lives.But clearly, I have not quite learned the lesson.
I'm feeling oh-so frustrated right now by my lack of control in so many areas. Take my stepson, for example, who seems determined to fail the seventh grade. The control freak in me says that there must be something we can do, something to force him to see the light and start acting like just a half-ass student instead of the class clown. We've tried everything I can think of, though, and nothing works. Nothing. So I'm trying to back off, to play it nonchalant ("Your grades, your problem"), but inside I'm still scrambling, climbing the figurative walls in fact, desperate to discover the secret, the trick, that will fix what nothing else has fixed.
And then there's my mother. She's very ill, and she is the queen of the control freaks. The QUEEN, I tell you. But she simply can't keep up anymore--all of the things that were once in her control are simply falling by the wayside, being neglected, and becoming more and more difficult for anyone to get a handle on. And yet, when I try to calmly, reasonably suggest that she allow us, her family, to take over some of those responsibilities (just temporarily of course), to lift the burden from her (and quite frankly, from my worrying, insomniac self), she refuses. Steadfastly. With nonsensical excuses and endless procrastination. And it's driving me nuts.
My husband says I need to detach from all of it. Just let it go.
Yeah, right.
posted by lit lover at
11:19 AM
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