Controlling my Narrative

I apologise for the past couple of posts. I’ve been in probably the darkest part of my life so far for the last week or so, but for some reason I felt a lot better today. Thank you to everyone who reached out to me to offer me words of encouragement or advice. They were beacons of light in the shadowy, lonely place I call school.

So, hopefully my posts will be back to their normal self of only anxiety and shyness! Because those I can live with…

Now onto the actual post: Control

I’m not a controlling person. I’m not bossy or anything. When I say I have to be in control, I mean that I always, always, always have to be in control of MYSELF, and of my own narrative. Let me explain what I mean with an example…

Story time 🙂

About 7 months ago, it was the night before my 17th birthday. I had planned with my ‘friends’ to go out to a (very unposh)restaurant to eat, and then go to the cinema I think. It just so happened that one of the other people in my ‘friend group’ had a birthday a few days after mine, and so we were having a sort of joint celebration. Anyway, there were only 4-5 people going, and all people I knew well. Then, that night, I got a message on our group chat that my partner-in-birthdayship had invited one of her friends, someone I knew of, but didn’t know at all as a friend or anything. I freaked out. My anxious brain went into overload about having to go out with someone I didn’t know. It would ruin the day that I hoped would be fun. So – and this is very weird I know – I messaged the group and told them I couldn’t go, and I couldn’t tell them why. They were obviously very confused…like, who doesn’t go to their OWN birthday?? One of them, the closest person in the world to me at the time (not anymore)texted me privately, and eventually coaxed me into going. I tried to tell myself that it would be fine, that I wouldn’t really have to talk to this new person very much, like I said, I didn’t know who she was really. Even so, the next day, I was at the restaurant early, and sitting there, my brain flitting about going mental.

She never showed. She had football practice or something. I had never been more relieved in my life.

I don’t know if that story made any sense; it was quite rambling, and without names, it was probably really confusing, but I hope you can get a bit more sense of what I mean by wanting to be ‘in control.’ I guess it’s part of my anxiety and shyness. Before I go out anywhere, I always make a mental list of what I can talk about, and if something messes up my mental processes like that, I can’t deal with it, and just shut down. It’s similar with big changes in my life, like moving country. I’ve now lived in Jordan for 8 years, and in a way I dread going back to the UK for university, because I don’t really know any of the little quips about the country that I should…like how to pay contactless on a bus, which I messed up VERY bad this summer. But that’s a story for another time.

I liked writing this. It feels like a release again, posting, which is what I started my blog to do.

Have a good day ❤