Control

When I was a young woman, I volunteered with Barbara at the nursing home in Mansfield.  We did manicures on the ladies there once a week.  One visit, one of the nurses brought in a load of towels to be folded.  I along with one of the older ladies helped.  Now everyone has their own way of folding clothes, and I am sure most couples will tell you it might have caused one or two fights when they first got together.  Example, I was taught that you fold the wash clothes in quarters.  As I sat there calmly folding the washcloths at the nursing home, my stack of quartered wash clothes all nice and neat, one of the older ladies on the other side of the table took each of my washcloths and unfolded them so they were in halves.  At first I was really pissed, watching her undo all my work, and then I was kind of well undone myself.  It had never occurred to me, there might be other ways of doing things, not just my way which I considered to be the right way.  Either way the washcloths still got folded.

I am having one of those moments again this weekend.  As I struggle and continue to fight to clean up the massive damage my mother has done to me.  As I continue to seek the real Ilsa, not just the woman / girl/ child who has spent a life time defending and protecting herself.  With ever breath I am trying to learn to be kinder, more thoughtful, more understanding, and to let go my constant ridged need for control.

Pete, my beloved professor of Anthropology, used to say, “There are two kinds of people in the world Ilsa, lumpers and splitters.  You my dear are a lumper.”  To illustrate what I mean, let me tell you about a little test I used to ask of people who worked under me.  I would give them a hand full of writing implements, pens, pencils, markers, sharpies, etc, and tell them to separate them for me.  You can answer it in several ways, some lumped all the pens in one pile, and the pencils in the other.  They were the lumpers.  Some however put the pens together in one pile and then separated them out, into colors or tip types or both.  There were details that were important to them, that were not important to others.  They were the splitters.  They all got sorted, and no pile was worse for the wear.  But it gave me a clue, as to how their minds worked.  To lumpers I gave simple instructions, to splitters I gave more complex instructions. 

It is my job to run the house, and for the last week or so I have been down with another round of bronchitis.  And I have tried this time to be more still and quite with this bout, to let my body heal.  But I still have my issues folks.  I know Jay can run this house, not the way I do, not on the same time table, and sometimes that is difficult for me.  We had a fight the other night, and after it was over I was upset and laying on the bed.  Jay came in and we talked and made up.  He reminded me that he is a different person, and there for is going to do things different then I do.  Heartbreaking, that at 40, sometimes I forget such simple things, that I have to be told these things again and again.

I told you last time we talked that I was reading a good book called, “Healing the daughters of narcissistic mothers:  Will I ever be good enough?” by Dr. Karyl McBride.  In it she talks about the engulfing narcissistic mother.  She is the kind that never sees her child and her as different people.  Her child is an extension of herself.  My mother was very much this way with me.  I simply called it smothering.  I have realized as of late, that I think I often act that way towards Jay.  Although I would never degrade him, by saying like so many of my friends do, that their husband is their other child, Jay is my equal, my pal, my partner in crime, but I would never, ever consider him my child.  It has been my realization this week, I often do not see Jay as his own separate person.  I seem him as an extension of myself, and therefore expect him to pick up where I left off, in the same way I would.  As awful as all this sounds, at least I am aware of this horrendousness and I am trying to correct it. 

Jay is not me, and I have to remember that.  He is going to run the house on a different time table then I do.  He is going to start cooking dinner when he gets hungry.  Not when the timer on my tablet says we should.  I try to start cooking dinner at a certain time, so that I can have us in bed at a certain time, to make sure he gets as close to 8 hours of sleep as he can, because he has to go to work the next day.  These are not his major concerns in life.

My days are consumed with his schedule.  Making sure his scrubs and shirts are clean, so that he has multiple choices to pick from for the next day.  I know he like the shirts more than the scrub tops.  Trying to make sure the kitchen is clean enough to cook in for super.  That the sheets are clean, the floors swept, the house smells clean, the poop is picked up, and the animals are tended to.  It is a full time job.  Then I try to take care of me, write, exercise, meditate, and crochet in the spare moments in between, and beat myself up that I don’t have a job that brings in money.  And then trying to hurry up and write us out of poverty.  Hoping my writings will sell, and provide additional income for us.

I’m taking it in fits and spurts y’all, so please forgive me.  I just sat down from cleaning up in the kitchen, and working on dinner, and fussing with Jay over getting things done.  There has to be a learning curve here.  I sit and sit until I can’t do it anymore, and then I get up and start handling things, cause it needs to be handled.  Then I think, I am just helping, not control things, or imparting that he can’t handle things.  Letting go and not handling everything is rough on me.  Then I think, he works, I can’t ask him to do my job too, but then I am beating a dead horse with all this.  Just a note to say, I’m working on it y’all.  It’s harder than it looks. 

Ilsa