Flashback — Control Freak

We go through phases. I’ve been through mine. This one’s from one of the darker ones. It’s a poem, slam style. It’s from a younger, and still somehow older and more jaded version of me. It reminds me of what I have been through. Who I’ve been. All I can say is that I’m glad to have reached here. To a quiet place in Simpli City.

Photo by Celine Nadeau via Flickr

So I’m a control freak

Now that we have that out of the way

Let’s see what control freaks want

I want to know how things go

I want to have a say in how things change

I want to be able to predict

My today and tomorrow and the day after that

And if I can’t, if there are surprises

I want to be able to deal with them

I want to be able to survive them

Because life as I know it is crazy enough

Everything else outside of this little circle of mine

Is their world that I do not seek to change

That’s all I want out of life

That’s all the control I care for

But even I’ve found is too much to ask

I am a control freak

And I feel like I am surrounded

By people who want a say in who I am

My idea of control has always been about me

I’ve let everyone else be

My significant others and the insignificant others

I’ve accepted and weaved through

The myriad eccentricities and quirks

Of the fellow animals I share this cage with

I have always lived and let live

Never tried to change or judge

But the world knows no reciprocity

It takes but does not give

It demands kindnesses, but does not appreciate

I ask for nothing but to be left alone

But loneliness is too precious a gift in our crowded world

I am a control freak

But I just try to control what I do

They, they want to control everything

My thoughts, my decisions

My beliefs, my perspectives

My faith or the lack of it

My past and what I feel about it

My present and how I deal with it

My future and how I plan to shape it

My dreams or my stubborn insistence on trying to make them true

They want me to change, and everyone like me

They want me to become them, everyone to become them

But I want to be me, I want to stay me

I want to fight them as they try to change me

Maybe, I can try to change them to be like me

But even in that twisted desire, I have already become them

I am a control freak

And I’ve spent a lifetime fighting

I have fought for my causes and those of others

I have fought for my right to just live a simple life

Not hurtful, not offensive

Not intrusive, and not even threateningly flamboyant

A quiet life filled with simple decisions that are mine

A quiet life filled with a sense of my identity

Because the moment I give up that control

I feel them taking it up, and it’s not just the voices in my head

I feel them nudging me along the beaten track

I feel them convincing me with wisdom that is conventional

I feel them berating me with sense that is common

I feel them, all the time, trying to tell me what I’m doing wrong

I feel more and more of them

And I feel less and less of me

I am a control freak

But there is only so much I can fight for control

Before all that is left is the freak

I can shrug away the need for conformity or social acceptance

Or the mere nod of normalcy or even mediocrity that we crave

That absolves us of the dreadful outcast badge

That tells us that we are doing the right thing

Because hey, millions have done it before

I can’t seem to understand that logic

I can’t connect with that divine vision of theirs

I can’t even play along or act dumb

My shock at their one-size-fits-all approach

Is writ large on my damned face

And it gives me away to them

And that is how they found out

That I was a control freak

I was a control freak

But I’ve given up

As grey streaks race through my hair

And crow’s feet claw their way around my eyes

I take a deep breath and look back on me

The me that was a control Freak

I wish he had won

I wish he had given up

I wish he had been different

I wish he had been the same

Life might have been kinder or just more mundane

And like all things boring and strife free

It would have left him without breaking his spirit

So that in those fleeting moments before he woke up

He would feel something real and truly believe

That he could indeed control everything