Controlling People

Another piece of the puzzle to fit in and the larger picture begins to emerge.  Maybe I don't have all the pieces yet, I probably don't, but I have enough to see the picture that was always in the background.  I am now reading the last book of the books I ordered from the library in order to gain a better understanding of bullying people and controlling people.  Bullies have a need to control and controlling people have a need to define you in their own terms, not as you see yourself, but as they want you to be.  My mother, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, my husband; all themselves victims of controlling parents who perpetuated the cycle of controlling behavior that made them what they were; less than they could have been and damaging to those they were trying to control. 

Control institutionalized in church, school, society, is reflected in family life that damages and destroys relationships and creates lonely, unhappy people.  Acceptance of others as they are is the opposite of control and doesn't happen with controlling people.  At the same time that the controlling person doesn't really see or hear others, he or she never sees themself for what they are or what they are doing.  The controlling person is a good person, a nice person, and so it follows that everything they do is nice and good, no matter how truly awful.  Having eyes they do not see, having ears they do not hear, and having deadened their own feelings, they feel empathy for no one.

I feel more myself than I have felt for many, many years.  Those who were bent on controlling me are gone; I can relax, breathe, laugh, sing, dance and be myself without fear of repercussions for showing publicly what was always there, inside, hoping to get out someday.  How sad for those whom I could have loved if they had let me be me. Love and trust go hand in hand and you can't trust the one who tries to redefine you as what you are not.  Free to be - me and you.  So many things make sense now as I look back.  Well, not exactly sense, they weren't good sense then and still aren't, but I am coming to an understanding of the "what" even if the "why" is still incomprehensible.