just so you know.
i do consider myself to be pretty normal. i have to dance and shake my way into my jeans. i pick my nose in the car. i think i'm adele when i'm singing in the shower. i cry when i see new babies. i talk to my dog like she's a person i make my life seem cooler on instagram. and sometimes i eat ice cream for dinner. i am a human. and a recently discovered control freak. ok...so maybe i've had "controlling or bossy" tendencies my whole life but i shit you not it did not enter my mind as something debilitating or harmful until monday when my therapist (bless her) asked me if i ever felt let down or disappointed with things in my life. all the time, i said. why do you ask? because, she explained, i think you may be so consumed with controlling and planning your life that you don't spend too much time living it. OH. SHIT. well, brb gotta go re-think my entire life bye. she was so right though. i can recall being a child and purposefully not enjoying a fun thing my family and i did together because it wasn't a part of "my plan." my entire life is made up of things i've planned out and accounted for. everything up to my eiffel tower engagement has been orchestrated, in some way, by me. and you know what? sometimes the most amazing things i've planned turn out to be dissapointing because i have removed the fun from them. i am a fun-sucker. but i'm working on it. truly. my homework this week was to eliminate some negative vocabulary from my life. i took out the "should be, could be and ought to be" in my day to day language. i stopped trying to control the outcome of things and micromanage the people in my world. and then yesterday i literally caught myself projecting my idea of perfect and right onto my kids. we were making birthday cards for a parishioner of the church who just turned 100 years old (#goals). i explained to the kids how to fold the card (fine, normal, not controlling). but then i gave them specific directions for how to make, what in my mind, is a perfect and appropriate birthday card. i made them start over if the greeting message wasn't on the side of the card that i felt it should be on (slow down crazy, slow down!). WHO DOES THAT!? i legitimately stopped dead in my tracks, realizing what i had done. i made it seem that my perfect way for writing cards was the only way. i squandered the creative talent of my nuggets by forcing them to fall in alignment with what i thought was right. i felt so ashamed. because a world with only things that i find pretty and perfect would be horribly boring. sometimes my kids need me to control or guide the way they complete assignments or learn new concepts. sometimes my ideas really are the best ones. and sometimes i need to chill the eff out. my plans are pretty and safe. they are ok from time to time. but not all the time. i hope that if you love control like me, you take comfort in this. you're not a bad parent or teacher or friend. you're a human. a wildly complex, beautifully colorful human. we make mistakes. we nitpick how our mom folds laundry or how our roommate does the dishes. we wrestle with wanting things to be perfect not because we're bad people but because we are NORMAL people. you are a normal person. and by george so am i. we're gonna be ok, friends. i just know it. xo
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