To begin, I am a particular person. I like things a certain way and often for reasons I do not fully understand, I just NEED them to be that way. It isn’t optional or really even controlling, I just need things to be a certain way because I do. To feel safe. I didn’t know it was a safety thing for a very long time and so I accepted others assessment that it was just controlling behavior. But isn’t that what control is anyway? A misguided attempt to feel safe?
Well, it is for me.
I have this idea that if I can just control my environment, make things look a certain way, make me look a certain way, I will be ok. Now, I am not a complete idiot. I know that this is not true. But the delusion persists and while I make strides to change, I will claim only marginal success.
I have many, many idiosyncrasies, like perhaps one might call it a fuck ton. And I have come to kind of love them in a way and manner that perhaps they could use some work, but also see the vital role they play in my life while also having this detached bemusement at them. Which I will tell you is immense progress!
So counter-clockwise is one of them. I must do things counter-clockwise. If there is a room full of people and we are going around the room and I have any say in the directionality, we are going against the grain, every single time.
Hiking, errands, anything that has a circular directionality to it, I will naturally and habitually do it counter-clockwise.
I think this comes from my innate nature to rebel and go against the grain. I do not enjoy being part of the masses, and have very arrogantly over the years done some really stupid shit just to show off that I am different. I see today that I am not all that different, all of us have that inner fighter that doesn’t want to conform or acquiesce. Everyone. How we handle that inner voice is where we tend to differ. Some of us, listen every time and our lives are littered with the fallout and debris from a life run on self will. Others rebel in smaller ways, and some of us more neurotic people, have this innate sense that the best way to go in life is against the smooth movement of clockwise.
I am going to claim some progress here and say that this detached amusement with myself about myself is newer. And I am grateful to see myself more clearly and be able to see the areas I am still fucked up and also laugh at myself at the same time. Gone are the 400 page indictments of yesteryear. I can still go there at times but the times are much more rare.
So for now and perhaps the rest of my life, I am content with this inner rebellion that results in me needing to move against the grain and in a counter-clockwise manner. Perhaps this says a lot, perhaps it says nothing. Regardless, I am super grateful to have any kind of objectivity about me and all my quirks and to also be motivated to continue peeling back all the layers of myself to reveal something new that I didn’t even know was there.
I do have one exception though - petting cats. Petting cats the wrong way is just rude.
