Control and Order

Funny, what a little disruption can do to a person. Loss of order and normality, however shortlived or ultimately beneficial, never fails to ruin my mood and set my black dog on my back. Before I go to bed the night before, I must know what my day ahead holds for me. Admittedly not the specifics, the unaccountable and unpredicatble minuate of social interactions, but the general shape must be known. Or else I will not sleep easy. There is a considerable amount of comfort that a person in my situation can take from that. It is control, of a sort.

We all want to feel in control of our lives, do we not? Being able make decisions for ourselves, not simply doing what we are told or what some unseen force may have ordained. If someone is not entirely in control of their own emotions, their own thoughts, then they need something else to cling to. Control needs to be exherted at least somewhere. Rigourously monitoring what food one consumes, making sure that you never exceed those GDAs and deprive yourself the next day if by some chance you do, that's quite a common way of reasserting that lost control. It's actually surprisingly easy to fall into a routine of doing it, the behaviour just normalises after a while.

Perhaps it helps that I have such a desperate need for a regular, uninterrupted and unaltering routine. But life never really is kind enough to leave timetables unchanged week in, week out.

For almost as long as I can remember, the black dog has been hounding me. Through the years his shape has changed, he has grown considerably since the day when I first noticed him tailing me. He has become much more ferocious than he once was, he is far less easily silenced lately. But all things must start at infancy, and my black dog is no exception. I would now hazard to say that he cannot grow much further, although his lifespan is something I can't even begin to guess at. He may still be following me in ten years time for all I know, or we may parts ways within the year. Certainty has never really characterised our acquaintance after all.

Imagining a life without my black dog is damn near impossible, for he has simply been with me for so long, since my early adolescence in fact. But, I dare to think that I may soon be able to shake him off, before it becomes too late. There is a reason for me to truly hope at long last. So, this chance shall be taken to at least partially explore the mind and memories of a black sheep, before she comes to shed her woolen skin and throw off the nose of the canine that has so long pursued and mauled her.