Losing control, and learning to live with it

2020 isn’t over yet so I feel dissuaded from saying anything definite and final about it. The universe still has 4 weeks to Punk us before calling it a day. But if there is anything at all I can say about this year, it is that, so far, it has been a teacher, and a harsh mistress at that. Among the many lessons in which it schooled me, probably the biggest and most important one was in regards to control: having control, not having control, the anxiety linked to things being outside my control, and basically how to manage it all before I am eaten alive.

From a young age, I relished the feeling being in control gave me. I am the eldest of four, so usually for my brother and sisters it was my way or the proverbial highway. I was in charge, I picked the games we played, I determined how long we would engage in each activity before I decided I was bored and we were all going to do something different instead, I wrote the Santa letters because my younger siblings’ spelling and grammar were no match for mine. Fast forward to today: I am a teacher, a job in which I have a huge deal of control and influence but (hopefully?) am not as much of a bitch about it. Yes, I have a national curriculum to follow and school policies and party lines to which to adhere, but for the most part, I get to choose how curriculum objectives are realised in my classroom. Save for team-teaching and staff planning, it is usually up to me how daily activities are rolled out, and I absolutely live for it.

Being a single professional in my 20s also means that it is very much up to me what I do with my time off - no boyfriend or kids to consider, or best friends upon whom I am overly-dependent. I wanted to go on an extended trip to South East Asia last year, so I did, for a month. It was one of the best things I ever did for myself. And while I was there, I fell in love with travel and new people and being in far-flung places, so I figured I would take work off the following year and move to Australia, where I would teach, plan trips, make new friends, experience mad things and, with the help of God, come back with some sort of a sun-tan (being Irish, one can see why divine intercession would need to be enlisted for this one). I got my career break approved in February, applied for my visa at the start of March, and started planning for my big move, looking to fly to Sydney on August 30th.

And then COVID-19 hit Europe.

And none of it could happen like I wanted it to.

Cue the initial panic, anxiety, anger, frustration, fear, feelings of injustice, then feelings of guilt for feeling hard-done-by when other people’s immediate situations are so much worse. For the first time in my adult life, control over my own present and future was wrenched from my grip. And I had to learn to be okay with that. But it wasn’t plain sailing. A grieving process was beginning, grief for the life plans I had nurtured and honed for months, grief for the sense of control I always had in my life, and I needed to move through each stage if I was to come out the other side.

1. Denial: Denial that all hope was lost. ‘I most certainly do still have control over things,’ I told myself blindly. Enter obsession with having a neat and tidy environment. I compulsively folded anything that was foldable, wiped worktops to within an inch of their lives, kept the draining board empty, had the chairs pushed into the sparkling table, decluttered my room, put everything in its place, basically. I couldn’t control what was happening out in the world so I needed to get that sense of control from within the four walls of the house. My parents were very happy that I stayed in this stage for as long as I did.
   
   
2. Anger: ‘Why me? Why this year, when I had big plans? Why not when I was 14 and had nothing of note going on? This is so unfair. Only I am in charge of what happens in my life, not a stupid virus, not the government, not anyone.’ Then thoughts like this would give way to guilt. Guilt over the fact that people are dying, out of work, not able to come home for funerals, having the wedding (or other celebration) of their dreams cancelled, not being able to visit friends or relatives... I don’t know if reminders like this made me feel more or less angry, to be honest. But when I made the decision to postpone my career break and forget about Oz for the meantime, the anger raging within seemed to slowly dissipate. Realising too that everyone in the world was no longer in control of their own lives actually helped me make peace with losing control over mine.
   
   
3. Bargaining: ‘Okay, I’ll put in another year teaching in Ireland, but then I get to go to Oz. You’re not stopping me next year. 2021 will be my year. In the meantime, I’m going to meditate, do creative projects, spend time outdoors, read… but the ball will be in my court next spring when there will most certainly be a vaccine and everything will be fine and I can get my career break for the following academic year and it can all happen like I originally planned.’ The longer time went on, and the more life became disjointed, the more I realised that this is unlikely, that I probably won’t get to travel in 2021, and that I need to just focus on the day-to-day, whatever that looks like.
   
   
4. Depression: In fairness, I thought I would be camped out at the depression stage for a lot longer than I was. I cried for a bit one day, upset that I would be wrinkled and in my 30s before I would ever set foot on a plane again, and then that was kind of it. Honestly. Regular therapy sessions, a reflective, inquisitive mind, and conversations with my amazingly open-minded and chill parents helped bridge the gap between depression and acceptance, that the time I have now is mine to do with what I please (COVID restrictions permitting, of course), so to use it well and to know that there are other things in life into which I can pour my energies.
   
   
5. Acceptance: I really want to believe that this is where I am now. Yes, I most certainly do cycle back and forth between the other stages now and again, but thankfully I do not sit with those negative feelings for long. Accepting that I do not call the shots all of the time was a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it I have done, and a sense of overall contentment has flowed through my bloodstream ever since.

Having control is comforting. We like knowing what’s coming, we like choice, we feel safe when we are in charge. When that gets taken away from us, anxiety sets in. I think I speak for us all when I say that having life as we know it wrested from us and thrown up into the air this year has most certainly caused widespread panic and worry. What I have learned from it all, however, is to focus on what is in your control. If we have absolutely zero influence over something, it is a waste of our time to obsess over it and fret about the outcome. I could be worried now, in December, that it still won’t be safe to move to Australia next year, that the borders will still be closed, that there will be no vaccine - things I am not in a position to change - or I could focus on teaching my class, exercising, making nice meals, catching up online with friends, reading good books, meditating. These things are all within my control and they make me feel happy, so from where I’m standing, it would seem far more productive to channel my energies into these areas. And just as I am surrounded by people in my own life who fret and agonise daily over things outside their spheres of influence, I realise, ironically, that I have no control over whether or not they worry about those things either.

In hindsight, this wasn’t even actually the direction I wanted this blog post to take - I had something completely different in mind for how I would address the area of control. But the Kubler-Ross stages of grief seemed an apt way to describe the process by which I relinquished my need for control, so I rolled with it. It just goes to show, doesn’t it: plan though we might, it doesn’t always turn out the way we anticipated, and that’s okay too.