All the Horrible Girliness

Control Freaky

It's amazing how the worst control freaks don't often admit it. My longest-standing friend is this fantastic guy who lives in a spotless apartment in San Francisco. He has always been just so. He did a boring kind of thing in high school, with the sweaters and the suede shoes. Then one day during senior year, he showed up in heavy, steel-toed boots. I was in the mall with him when he decided, seemingly out of the blue, to buy a motorcycle leather jacket, with the obvious zippers and such, but it was not out of the blue. He knew exactly what look he wanted.

The mohawk followed. The most carefully procured and styled mohawk ever in existence. Thank god he wore it up for my wedding photos. I wouldn't have it any other way.

He's more professional now. His shoes are Italian, expensive, and he uses his shoe horn every time. His belongings and furniture are minimal, each item bought with forethought to its placement in his apartment.

Yet, if you call him a perfectionist, or a control freak, he will argue with you. Then he will tell you he doesn't understand why people get so bent out of shape about Martha Stewart; I mean, god forbid someone do something to the best of her ability.

I don't know why the control freak is so badmouthed these days. Maybe it is synonymous with "dictator," giving it that scary Sadaam feel, like we might cleanse the world of the lazy. It reminds me of that Eddie Izzard bit where he's talking about Hitler being a painter. "I cannot get this tree right... damn! I will kill everyone in the world!"

I am not quite to the control freakout calibur of my dear longstanding friend or that scary vegetarian, Hitler, but I do lose sleep over what I cannot control. It frustrates me to no end that I cannot flip the switches in my mother's brain. She would be so much happier, believe me. I'd have her living and working in Hawaii, taking long morning walks with her svelte Samoan lawyer slash fire-eater husband, downing wheatgrass shots and adopting stray kittens. It's not quite the life for me, but I know damn well what's best for her. And wouldn't it be great if I could argue the evil aunt into submission, or even knock her lights out like I've dreamed of for years? (I would let her swing at me first, I decided, then catch her sorry wide excuse for a hook and implant my two biggest knuckles into the bridge of her nose.)

I am only now getting to the place where I don't control Mr. Aran so much. I am an insufferable bitch much of the time. Each time he takes the laundry downstairs, I'm certain he's going to fall to his death. If he does not answer his phone at work, I know he's in the broom closet with the receptionist. (Trust me, though, I don't accuse him of this. Often.)

He will soon be driving on his own, which is the worst. I control whatever car I'm in, no matter who's driving. When we back up, I swivel my head to look. I cannot imagine the horror of sitting at home while he drives somewhere on his own. Millions of crash scenarios, each resulting in a gorier death, will go through my brain, and I will try to drown them out with Family Guy DVDs.

Even now, I'm trying to figure out if it's too early for Santa to be arriving, if kids these days go to bed as early as I used to, if they even believe in him any more in these jaded times, and whether I should let our kid believe in Santa at all, in which case s/he'll be that annoying kid who tells the other kids about the falsity of all their hopes and dreams.

It also pisses me off to no end to not have any idea what in fuck all is going on in my uterus right now. If I could have a daily ultrasound, I would. I would wheel one into my living room, squirt the jelly and stick the scary dildo thing up in there, poke around a bit. I want to be the first to know if there is an extra head or leg or if perhaps it isn't a baby at all, but a weird canine/human amalgam. I have often seriously wondered if I could buy a stethoscope to at least hear the heartbeat. I just don't want to repeat the first time, where I joyfully looked at the monitor, pretending to understand what I saw there, joking and playing with the... ultrasoundologist, only to find out later that her strained silence was the result of my unknown uterine failure. I have had sick miscarriage scenarios run through my head, where I realize I'm bleeding and I jump in the shower, to catch the blood, and pull the plug thing, and root through the mess trying to find the baby. This is institutional shit, ladies and gentlemen.

The control freakiness is all borne out of fear. I know I'm scared. It's a brave thing, to let someone else steer the ship for awhile, to trust. Faith is not an inborn ability for me. It's something I've cultivated and hidden away. I don't want anyone to know I have it. How weak it appears, to believe in something unproven, to acknowledge the existence of things no one can yet make scientific and I can't even really explain. That little bit of faith has shown me, though, that my mother is much stronger than I am, because she goes headlong into dangerous territory without fear. I will never have that. I will just have to admire her for it.

posted by Samus @ 10:24 PM