Control

My whole life has been a battle for control.  Growing up, that was the biggest, by far, conflict with my parents.  I wanted to control my own life; not anyone else's, just my own life.  But I was a kid so my parents asserted their authority and power over me (as indeed most parents do) and very few decisions were my own.  I was so angry all the time.  I just wanted the right to control my own life.  Even if I made bad decisions, I wanted the right to make them and then when I fucked them up, I would be able to learn from my mistakes.

I understood very early on that mistakes were learning opportunities, but I struggled to articulate this to my parents until nearly the middle of high school.  When I finally did manage, my parents simply couldn't understand.  Their job was to protect me from making mistakes and getting hurt.  I was asking them to voluntarily let me make mistakes and thus possibly get hurt (not physically, but emotionally, etc) from them.  But what I wanted and needed was the ability to make mistakes while I still had a safety net, and I told them this.  If I had messed up in college or I make a mistake in the real world, there isn't a whole lot my parents can do for me, but in high school, I still needed to fall back on them.

So senior year I had a lot of freedom.  A lot more than most 17 and 18 year olds.  I didn't really have a curfew.  I slept over at friend's houses, even on weekdays (partially because their houses were a lot closer to my school).  They didn't interfere with my relationship with Boyfriend.  It was nice and after my parents got over the fear that I was completely rejecting them, my relationship with my family got a lot better.

Now, I'm out of college.  I control my own finances, I know how to live in an apartment, I own my own car (which I bought myself), I have a profession that has supplied me with steady jobs, I can explore my own sexuality without being looked down on (mostly).  Life is really good.  But in addition to all those things I have control over in my life, my job requires me to be in control of situations nearly constantly: running rehearsals, keeping the director on time, scheduling, keeping the actors quiet, helping the actors learn the correct lines, running backstage/calling cues, caring for injuries, and the list goes on and on.  I love my job.  I love having control over myself but having control over so many people is something that I think will always make me a little bit wary and it tends to exhaust me.

Sometimes, lately especially, I just wish someone would forcibly (I don't think I could give it up otherwise) take control away from me.  Not permanently and not violently.  But just in a way that forces me to relax and let someone else take charge.