Judgemental Control Freak

I tried bullet journaling once, it gave me anxiety. It made me feel like if I had a spare nothing day I HAD to fill it with tasks. It’s not a technique that should be used for people who aren’t naturally busy. I literally got to the point where I couldn’t sit down and relax once at home until I had ticked everything off. And then one day I put it away and never picked it back up.

Imagine being one of those people (you might not need to imagine if this rings true for you) that has to be active, doing something, otherwise the thoughts of uncertainty just eat you up inside. You have some spare hours after work before your partners home, you’ve asked to call on your friend, but she’s out, what will you do now?

You must get home quick before your car blows up on the motorway, because the uncertainty monster will stick a rock of dynamite in your exhaust if your whole day isn’t planned.

Gym, Pole Dancing, Crochet, Walking, Youth club. And to spend 1–3 hours at each, alongside a full time job and have time for impromptu events such as seeing Spice Girls at the weekend with a long time friend. I’m speaking about a specific person here, but that is because I am genuinely worried that if she doesn’t slow down soon she’s going to head into a full blown breakdown with the way she is letting anxiety rule her life. The constant need to be busy, always planned something out. And if you spend time with her, it has to be on her basis, her itinerary.

I booked the AirBnB, so she had to drive.

She even put the wrong address in maps and took us to the wrong place before she listened to me. She had to have some sort of control, even if she was wrong.

My friend over-plans, she believes if she doesn’t over plan, if she doesn't have everything down scheduled in, something bad will happen to her. You can see it on her face, the urge to run away when she’s in a situation she didn’t plan for. Coming face to face with the uncertainty monster. But tbh I think she’s just like that with me, because she doesn’t trust that I can think on my feet.

I’ll give you the scenario:

We’d just come out of a spice girls concert and there was 50,000 other people walking out of the arena at the same time.
The taxi she’d booked via an app, had just told her to walk towards a road. 1.2 MILE UP, IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OF HOME.
My phone was dead and she had it in her bag.
Her phone had 25%
I had had 4 pints, she had had 4 gins. (Not enough to make us drunk)

My feet were on fire as I stupidly choose to wear heels to a concert. (Divvy) And I was walking barefoot across the road to some grass, she was marching on in front of me. Maybe I was the uncertainty monster, who knows, but I’m not really afraid of uncertainty.

What is the point of having a behavioral response to something if it is going to put you in more danger than just not responding?

The taxi THEN cancelled on her and told her to walk in the opposite direction that me and her had just walked. Still she kept walking off in front of me. There was only the two of us. She had my mobile phone in her bag. I don’t know what was going off in her head for her to want to leave a hoard of people and saunter off with my phone and card in her bag, increasing the distance of us of about 15 yards, but I knew it had to be panic. I wasn’t in panic.

I have been in some pretty fucked up situations where I have been so out of it drunk and still been able to get home okay. I had to tell her countless times to stop walking off, wait for me and my fucked feet, and ultimately to calm the fuck down. She only calmed down once we were on a bus. Which we still would have caught if she had waited for me and slowed down a bit.

I have no problem with her panicking, it’s a natural response.

This woman is an ex police officer and therefore this is why I had a problem with her behaviour when she was panicking.

Instead of staying with the heard of people, where if anything bad were to happen to us, there would be thousands of witnesses, she decided to walk away from the heard. And instead of staying with me and walking with me slowly, she increased the distance of us, putting us both at danger. AND THAT IS WHAT PISSED ME OFF.

She sped up (out of rage) indicated over to the next lane and just changed lanes without checking her blind spot.

What is the point of having a behavioral response to something if it is going to put you in more danger than just not responding?

So I told her if she was going to carry on walking off she might as well give me my phone and card, I then stopped talking to her. I noticed a bus stop and said we should try it, as there were people stood at the stop so they must be waiting for a bus, if not we could try a taxi there. When we were at the bus stop I stopped talking to her again, and on the bus I stopped talking to her. No amount of me telling her to calm down was helping. My feet were fucked.

Next Morning

I decided to quiz her on it, when she was driving home the next morning, yet again, I learnt something. I asked her why she over plans things, and can’t just calm down if things don’t go her way, because her flapping was putting us more in danger than my response which was to sit down and sooth my aching feet. At least that way I could have then reapplied my shoes once easier to walk and we could have found our route home better than her increasing the distance between us. She literally ran across the road on multiple occasions instead of waiting for the traffic lights to change. The woman is nearly 30. It was exhausting to watch. It was slightly a bit pathetic too, especially as she claims to have her life together and planned to perfection.

I learnt, DO NOT quiz an anxious person about being anxious when they are operating a vehicle that they could kill you in. She sped up (out of rage)indicated over to the next lane and just changed lanes without checking her blind spot.

I shit myself. I stopped talking because the only danger I could see was her moods.

Yet again, anxious to get home, so sped up out of the way of the car she was clearly going to hit if didn’t indicate and hastily steered into the path of another. But if she had not responded at all, not increased her speed we would’ve been in a far safer situation. Her flight response is strong. I tend to wait it out, preferring to check everything first before I make any sudden movements, or I just don’t check at all and just wait it out. Sometimes being still is the safest option.

So the reason she over plans is to avoid meltdowns like she had outside of the concert, because she maybe knows that her flight response is fucked up and will end up getting her into some serious danger if she doesn’t calm it down, but she can’t calm it down because of anxiety. Imagine having to create an itinerary of your life every second you are out of your home so you feel safe. That is how I imagine my friend copes.

But… is over planning the coping mechanism or is it the cause?

Imagine never having a day off school or work, because everything was prepared, imagine being taken to after school activities and having your whole life scheduled after work/school every night otherwise you’ll miss out and have a shitty life. Imagine never having to wonder what to do with your spare time because its pre-planned.

To me it sounds terrible, I love wanderlust. I love having spare time. I don’t like planning AT ALL because I want my life to be free of clutter and tasks and appointments and calendar invites. This would freak my friend out because in her head there’s more of a chance of things going wrong and life taking a bad turn if every step of an event or gathering is not thought out in advance.

To be fair, my phone had died in the concert because she rushed me out of the house being unable to fully charge my phone, she also decided when we would get there. Booking the taxi. So she knew my phone was dead and she was the only one who had juice, she could have booked a taxi during intermission, but she forgot because she was having a good time. She was free, she had nothing planned. But when we got outside, she lost her shit, because she had nothing planned.

“We’ll not bother with that taxi mate, I fancy a bit of danger tonight”.

When you have stuff always planned, you forget to develop the tools to get yourself out of danger effectively, sometimes to get out of danger you have to learn how to perform in it. To think on your feet. She should have this down to a fine art by now being an ex-police woman. But she didn’t, she flapped and over reacted, and I was expecting her to be a lot more level-headed than what she was. She over plans because she is no longer level headed. She booked the taxi, the taxi cancelled on her, and in her time of anxiety she was taking it out on me.

She spoke to me like shit, yelled at me and my shoes and my choices were to blame for the fact that we were seemingly in a place unfamiliar and our taxi bailed on us.

I had done nothing wrong, and I was getting the blame for cancelling the taxi. Like I rang them up and said “We’ll not bother with that taxi mate, I fancy a bit of danger tonight”.
On the way home in the car, to stop her driving like a fucking maniac, I had to admit to selecting the wrong shoes. The reason I picked those shoes however was because she came to pick me up from my house, and again rushed me out of the house. But even if I had the correct shoes, she still would have reacted like she did because of the cancelled taxi. She even rang her mum.

What 30 year old woman rings her parents over a taxi that has cancelled on her? A woman who doesn’t understand how to navigate danger because she always plans her self to never go near it. You can’t control everything in life.

What’s really sad is she never used to be like this, she used to be wicked, she would call me up and we’d go out impromptu, I’ve just asked her if she wants to go to a karaoke bar on Friday with me and two other friends of mine, and she’s said no, its not surprising she’s got pole dancing planned on Friday night so she can never go out on Fridays impromptu because she’d rather choose something planned by her than “not” planned any day of the week. And yes the karaoke thing is planned, just not by her, because she needs to control it.

Over planning is the control freak’s tool to feel safe, because wandering what to do next is just too stressful to even contemplate. Especially in times of danger. Maybe it’s the stress of not knowing where life may take you, but isn’t that what is so great about life?

All I know is on my way home, I lost respect for her. I always used to think she had her shit together, she knew what to do whenever plans go to shit. But she doesn’t. I lost respect mainly because when she had that melt down, she blamed me. Getting her to live an impromptu life where she doesn’t call all the shots will be hard. She’ll end the friendship because she doesn’t trust being out with me and that she’ll be safe. I don’t want to be having controlled fun. It sucks the fun straight out of it when it’s planned down to the very minute, and no a taxi isn’t a control issue. It’s the way she reacted towards me when the taxi cancelled on her. That I was the uncertainty monster, I had personally put her in danger.

She came across as the type of woman that blames another for their own rape, asking how many drinks a woman had, or what shoes were they wearing. Unless you ask to be murdered or raped, or mugged, or kidnapped, or stabbed or beaten up, unless you ask for any harm to come to you, no choices you make in life; shoes, dress, alcohol, phone battery deserves for you to be harmed. In that moment she pitted my choices against hers, and my choices were to blame for the taxi cancelling on us. My choices would be the harm that was to come to us, because in the light of it I just wasn’t as good as a navigator of life, because something had happened to me in the past (with people I loved and trusted, as 8/10 rapes are committed by someone known) but on the way home when I quizzed her why she was anxious, it turned onto me.

She started quizzing me about how long I had known these people, why didn’t I get a separate taxi home, how much I had to drink, my choice of friends at the time, even my lifestyle. I then got it, she didn’t trust me to keep her safe, she didn’t trust me to keep myself safe, because if she didn’t over plan (when with me) it she would end up like me. Damaged.

I don’t consider myself damaged, I consider myself rational, I blame no one but my attacker for what happened to me because he had a moral choice, and he chose to hurt me, he was my ex boyfriend after all, and we’d known each other two years when it had happened. My ex friend who was also there I had known three, I trusted her, but together they both lured me in a taxi and then when at his house he assaulted me. Both people at the time I loved and trusted. But in my friends eyes on the way home in her car, she decided to put the onus on me, and that is why I feel she feels she over-reacted, because I let myself get raped, and selecting the wrong shoes again I was also letting myself get raped. But this time she was also involved, so she walked away from me to not get caught up in it.

The only thing that was damaged from our concert together, was our friendship. I want to stay away from her and her shitty attitude to me and how responsible I am. I know what TRUE danger is, and I don’t see it in shoes. I don’t see it in cancelled taxi’s. I don’t see it in alcohol. I see it in moral choices of people, and division. Once you are divided you are unsafe.