Waking Up to Control
One of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had wasn’t realizing someone was trying to control me.
It was realizing I had spent so much time defending myself against the accusation that I was the controlling one that I never stopped to ask whether the story I had accepted was even true.
Control doesn’t always announce itself.
Sometimes it comes wrapped in concern.
Sometimes it comes wrapped in “I’m just trying to help.”
Sometimes it comes wrapped in endless conversations where you leave feeling like you need to apologize for existing. Someone telling you it’s ok to lean into dark thoughts while cataloging them against you, creating a condition of sadness.
Sometimes it comes in the form of slowly shrinking yourself so that someone else stays comfortable.
And the longer it goes on, the harder it becomes to see.
Because when you’re inside it, it feels normal.
The hardest part wasn’t the arguments.
It wasn’t the disagreements.
It was beginning to believe the narrative about myself.
If every boundary I tried to set was called controlling...
If every decision I made was questioned...
If every attempt to have my own opinion became a debate...
Eventually, I stopped trusting my own instincts.
Maybe I really was the problem.
Maybe I really was too much.
Maybe I really was controlling.
Those thoughts become their own prison.
Then something unexpected happened.
I started talking to people I trusted.
Not people who wanted to tell me what to do.
People who simply listened.
They asked questions I hadn’t considered.
They reflected back things I couldn’t see because I was standing too close to them.
Over and over, they gently pointed out something that had become invisible to me.
“That doesn’t sound like control coming from you.”
“Why are you the only one expected to change?”
“Why does every conversation have end with you apologizing or it doesn’t end?”
Those questions were uncomfortable.
Not because they were wrong.
Because they cracked open a story I had been living inside.
Control is incredibly difficult to recognize when you’ve adapted to it.
You begin anticipating someone else’s reactions before your own needs.
You explain yourself before anyone asks.
You seek permission for things that never required permission.
You mistake keeping the peace for keeping yourself safe.
You confuse compliance with kindness.
And somewhere along the way, you forget what your own voice sounds like.
The opposite of control isn’t winning.
It isn’t controlling someone back.
It’s remembering that you’re allowed to have boundaries.
You’re allowed to disagree.
You’re allowed to say no without writing a ten-page defense.
You’re allowed to make decisions that are right for you but wrong for someone else. They don’t always have to be a higher priority.
It is ok to hold people accountable to original agreements. That isn’t selfish.
You’re allowed to stop carrying responsibility for another person’s emotions.
Healthy relationships don’t require one person to disappear so the other can feel secure.
I don’t think healing always begins with a dramatic escape.
Sometimes it begins with a quiet sentence from a friend.
“I don’t think this is your fault.”
“I don’t think you’re seeing the whole picture.”
“I think you’ve been carrying something that doesn’t belong to you.”
“It’s ok to ask for help. It doesn’t have to come with an expectation.”
Those words can feel almost impossible to accept at first.
Because waking up is disorienting.
The world you thought you understood suddenly looks different.
But once you see it, it’s difficult to unsee.
Freedom didn’t come from proving I wasn’t controlling.
It came from realizing I no longer needed to defend my reality to someone committed to rewriting it.
It came from trusting my own experiences again.
From listening to the people who loved me enough to tell me the truth.
From learning that boundaries aren’t acts of control.
They’re acts of self-respect.
And sometimes happiness doesn’t begin when someone else changes.
Sometimes it begins the moment you finally believe what your own heart has been trying to tell you all along.
Learning I can live for others without putting all their needs ahead of my own.
Moving out of the basement of others and become an adult on my own again, even though that was against what they wanted. Sometimes, community is standing together in a way you would never expect. Moving into the outpost, temporarily, saved me from sleep deprivation control. I’m thankful I created my own escape and proved it successful, at the same time.
I appreciate my previous business co-owner, as she did do a lot to help us get to where we are. At the end of the day, she was always a partially conservative Christian, and there were things that we didn’t fundamentally ever get along on.
Community members change. I’m thankful that she gets the opportunity to live her truth while we get to protect the community more.