Poisonous Control

My inspiration for this post was someone writing about a recent quote from the Salt Lake Tribune that "More than likely [people] divorce because one or both of [them] couldn't tell the difference between control and love."

While growing up, it felt like nobody believed that I was psychologically abused. I would tell my stories and the person I was telling would tell me that I was a rebellious teen and I would grow out of it because everyone has that point in their lives when they hate their parents. The world seems to have acknowledged physical abuse and sexual abuse, but pure psychological abuse is still kind of iffy, especially when you're young, though that is when abuse is most harmful. I am very grateful that it was only one of the three kinds of abuse and that it was moderate enough that I was able to make so much progress so soon after leaving Mom's realm of influence, but it is still abuse and it hurts.

I learned from an expert how to control others. It got to such a point that in late high school, nobody but my mom was real to me--everyone seemed like a piece in a chess match to use against her and that she used against me. I played them to maximum effect and yet my life was still miserable. It didn't matter who they were--boyfriend, family, teachers, whoever--they were all weapons in my battlefield. It was such a relief to leave. After I left for college and got used to only being answerable to mostly just me and also Mom having absolutely no power over what I did (except during summer break, and even that hold had been weakened), I started making progress in my quest to break the habit of control. I've gotten to the point that when I tell people that I used to use people as pawns, they show disbelief.

Someone, anyone, having control over me was and is harmful AND controlling others harmed me. Working on not controlling others was pretty straightforward--if I could avoid getting someone to do something that they didn't want to do by nefarious means, I win that competition against myself. I don't even remember the last time I've lost since my major breakthrough. However, learning to live life without being controlled was a lot harder--people don't usually come out and warn you that they're controlling--sometimes they don't even realize themselves. For a long time, I had thought that I had gotten away from others controlling me until one of my sisters pointed out that almost all my ex-boyfriends had that in common with each other. I hadn't seen it because someone close trying to control me was the norm and it hadn't occurred to me to leave that comfort zone or even realize that it was one of mine until I had already left.