I’ve never been in the driver’s seat of my own life.  There are a lot of people (my four children to be sure) who would argue that I can come across as a bit of a control freak, but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. I can work very hard to try to manipulate specific outcomes (thus the control-freakiness), but the reason isn’t because I’m some crazy, egocentric narcissist.  I am absolutely driven by fear.  I am worried about displeasing my mother.  I’m afraid of alienating my children.  I fear judgement by friends and/or coworkers. I am absolutely terrified of disappointing someone…anyone, in fact.

I really, REALLY worry about disappointing people, almost constantly, to the point  I can hardly breathe at times.  I will do almost anything to avoid feeling like I’ve let someone down, but here’s the irony.; I wallow in shame on an almost daily basis, because I KNOW I just can’t do it all.  Its an ugly, vicious cycle: avoid disappointing others, and, as a result, disappoint them by avoiding them.  Writing this blog is more difficult than I ever imagined, because I am so concerned that I am going to offend someone.

These fears drive every choice I make, and as a result I sometimes want to pull my brain into a parking spot and let it just kind of idle for a while.  Trichotillomania helps me do that.  When I am sitting still, and my hands aren’t busy, I shift into some kind of cerebral neutral gear, my hand goes to my head, and I pull out one hair at at time.  Each hair has a certain “feel” to it, as I search for the right one.  When I find it, out it comes.  At its worst, I can unconsciously  do this for hours until there is a pile of hair on the floor.  Usually, I only pull a few at a time and I stop pretty quickly.  While I am pulling out my hair, I can feel the tension lower.  Its not like I’m all twitchy and jittery, jonesing for a hair or anything like that.  I just feel this “uncomfortableness” in my gut, and my hand just wants to pull.  When I’m done, nothing has really changed except I have less hair and I can breathe again, but sometimes that momentary escape is all that prevents me from absolutely losing my mind.

I am not in the driver’s seat of my life.  No, I am in the back seat and fear takes me places I never really wanted to go.   Fear drives me further and further away from my true self and leaves me stranded on the side of the road on somebody else’s journey.  More than anything, I long to tell those fears to take a flying leap.  I desperately want to take the wheel once and for all and live a wholehearted life.