Life Lessons: prompt
Control Is A Fairy Tale
We tell it so we can sleep at night
For as long as I can remember I have had a touch of OCD. Not clinically diagnosed, but there are signs.
It started somewhere in my childhood and grew in strength after my mother’s death when I was twelve. I remember working so hard to make everything the same as it was before my mother died. The loss of control over My Life’s experience and the mire of grief no one talked about in those days drove me to attempt to control my environment all the more.
As a married Human — my house is always tidy. Counters are clear, sink is empty of dishes, there are damn few knick-knacks anywhere to be seen. My decorating scheme revolves around photos of my family and my elder daughter’s artwork. The fact that my husband was a Human who worked on the ‘out of sight — out of mind principle’ nearly drove me over the edge. He has to SEE everything so his areas of the house were dumping grounds for all of his respective hobbies.
As a new mother — I would pick up ALL the toys. Every night. And sort them back into the ‘sets’ they belonged to. I remember one day gazing at my daughter’s little wagon of wooden blocks. I had set them all back into the wagon — color side up. I had to overcome the very strong urge to put them in alphabetical order because even I…
