Today has been quite pleasant.

My morning class was Movie Theory, and that is always a highly enjoyable class that doesn’t seem like school at all. And then I had the afternoon off, so I came home, caught up on sleep, and played Fallout 4 a bunch. I also started the detailed outline I promised I would get to Other Michael, AKA Michael Deo, who is my partner in the big Movie Theory presentation that we will be doing two weeks from today, on the 20th of June.

I tried to work out some kind of rational division of labour with him, I really did. You do these parts, I do these parts. And for the most part, I succeeded. But just when I thought I had won the battle agaainst my usually hidden but extremely potent demon of control freakiness, I said “Tell you what, I will do the outline first. ”

And he agreed, because he’s very sweet, shy, and quiet. Sigh.

This is my cross to bear when it comes to collaboration. I am not used to working with others and compromising. My creative world has been my own personal playground for my entire life and the idea of having my name attached to something over which I did not have full control and final say makes enormous alarm bells go off in my head.

How can I make sure it’s good if I don’t have total and supreme control over it?

But I am going to have to get used to it, because television is written by writer’s rooms, not writers, for the most part. And so I am going to have to GTFOver myself and learn to play nice. I am going to learn to silence those crazy ass voices in my head and actually (drum roll please, plus some kappi maki and a bowel of miso) TRUST somebody to do a decent job all on their own.

I have a lot of excess wiring in my head when it comes to that whole control thang. Perhaps this need for control is the real motivator behind my tendency to “accidentally” end up in charge of stuff. Well, that and my need to constantly show off how damned smart I am… I really should work on that.

People know I’m smart. It is apparently obvious. Rationally speaking, I have nothing to prove. But I have such outrageous ego needs stemming from my massive insecurity.

It’s this whole thing.

A big word in my whole control issue complex is “competence”. Competence is a huge huge issue for me. Perhaps it’s a product of my ferociously pragmatic mindset (what’s with that, anyway?), but I get extremely angry at incompetence. I truly feel that people who can’t or won’t do their jobs properly should be fired so someone who can actually do what they are paid to do can take their place. Incompetent design, lazy thinking, and dullwitted behaviours by otherwise mentally competent people all outrage beyond their proper proportions. I can get really, really mad about it if I don’t control myself.

And of course, that feeds into the whole control freak thing perfectly. If I can’t trust others to be competent, what other choice do I have? Obviously, the only way to insure things are done “right” is to do them myself, or even better, control how others do it. That way I can perform the executive function without worrying about my own incompetencies.

This side of me has remained latent and hidden because I have done everything on my own. Whether in school or out, I did my own thing all alone, just like a prisoner in solitary. Having friends helped a lot, but still those deep thick planes of glass keep me trapped in my own little world all by myself.

And that’s how I maintained control as well. When you are all alone, you don’t have to share, compromise, negotiate, or otherwise deal with An Other. You can have things entirely your own way. I never intended to end up needing that kind of thing, but human beings are amazingly adaptable, and that’s the adaptation I made to my decades of loneliness. Maybe if I had experienced a more equal and involved relationship with my siblings, I would have learned the necessary social skills from them. Or if I had got on better at school.

But that didn’t happen in those crucial years where I should have been soaking up social programming like a sponge. I learned how to be polite and considerate, I even somehow acquired the ability to be sensitive and sympathetic – but only with that vital degree of separation between me and others. Politeness, after all, is not just how we get along with one another – it’s also a way to keep people at arm’s length. Consideration can do the same thing. And I am sensitive and sympathetic…. but not like a friend.

Like a shrink.

Even all my online furry roleplaying, in which I am an idealized version of myself (cute, open, friendly, funny, cuddly, etc) represents that arms-length relationship with the world because it’s just text. That keeps it safely unreal and so it happens mostly in the realm of my imagination, where I feel safe. Sure, other people are contributing just as much to the interaction, so it’s not like I am alone (that would be truly sad), but I can only be the person that I am online because I am safe inside my armor of another identity, one over which I created and over which I have total control.

So as much as I want to be truly leave my shell and be a part of the world… I honestly don’t know what that is like. I don’t think I have truly lived in the world since I was molested.

I still have all that thick but perfectly invisible glass that lets me pretend I am really here because hey… do you see anything between me and you?

But some day I won’t need it, and it will disappear.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.