A Shadow of Control

I am coming to terms with a shadow aspect of myself and it feels vulnerable, shameful.

I can be very controlling.

It belies my free spirit, my desire to live and let live, my desire to use discernment yet not apply judgment. But it’s right there in my birth chart: my moon is in the second house of worth and security. I have a Taurus rising. These aspects highlight my deep need for to know what is next, to know where the support is coming from.

All my life I have run toward change, jumped from relationship to tryst to one-night-stand. I’ve spent money like it was on fire and burning my hands. I’ve moved, over and over and over, almost every year of my adult life. I’ve changed careers, I take ten online courses at once. I collect experience and information, in the quest for growth, and sometimes, to avoid, to run from myself.

Yet still, I want everything to be so precisely certain.

I am in the middle of a move to exactly where I want to be. And I fear it. I fear I will get there and not be able to support myself. My money story is turned up to eleven, even as patrons and supporters appear, women I would pay to be mentored by, paying me for my support. For my skills, the ones I question everyday. Are they real? Are they enough?

Am I enough?

Intellectually I know I’m enough, but seriously, what a bore intellect is sometimes. Tell it to the little girl inside me. The one who turns from me, shrinking and playing dead, as I quit the job I hate, and begin surrendering the process to god, growing my little atrophied trust muscle.

I want a glamorous trust muscle, I want it jacked and tan and vein-ridden. Goddess, hear my prayer. 

I drew tarot cards on my move; I just bought the Osho Zen deck. Divination and I are loving compadres, and this deck tells it like a fucking laser into my heart. I can’t stop drawing the control card. The “go with the flow” card, reversed. Osho, poking me even in death. Making a little fun.

I am so controlling over this move, needing to know every little detail, even the untellable future. I am so controlling over my partner, as we are moving together. I’ve painted him into a box. I’m the planner, the mother; he is the airhead, the traveler.

And it’s not true.

So this morning I sit down to write after dancing and shaking and yoga-ing my brains out. Which, right now, is exactly where I want them. Get into the body and out of the control—the illusion of control. Work the muscles of my arms and my legs to buoy this most important muscle: trust. Letting go.


Originally published June 3rd, 2017.