She's Lost Control

Mar 24, 2008 - 19:28 PM PST

This is an expanded excerpt from a much longer, much more personal blog/journal entry I wrote about a week ago.

There are things I can't control. This is supposed to be some sort of comforting affirmation but lately I'm having trouble believing it. I've managed to push away, after I felt like I was pushed away, someone I love very much and am now missing terribly. I'm just not sure at all what's going to happen now. I so want to believe - not just think - that each of us just needs to cool off, and then things will be OK. But I have serious issues with not knowing where I stand with people, and the more I care about someone the more I care about that. So I have had a lot of trouble thinking about anything or anyone else lately, and going back and forth between "just wait, it'll be fine" and "oh fuck." I feel like I do have control over the situation with him, because things got bad after something I said. But every minute and every day (and now, every week) that the phone doesn't ring, my heart cracks open a little bit more. Doesn't that put things in his control? What if we're both assuming the other has taken control and that we each just have to wait on the other to make a move? Where does that put the so-called locus of control??

I think I have to call him tomorrow. Just coffee. Sometime. I'm really relieved to be on break from work but having my distractions removed is ... difficult. Is that the only reason I want to call - because I have time to think about calling? Is what I'm feeling right now - in the tormenting absence of distraction - what's really rational? Or is it now irrational because I can think about it so much?

I often have a distraught 13-year-old girl or two who, at various points in the school year, will tell me about their boy troubles. As committed as I am to not lying to my students, I sometimes feel it's harsh when I have to tell them that it just doesn't get much better from here.


title taken from - "She's Lost Control," Joy Division