Confessions of a Control Freak – Part 4: A Flight From Shame

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Confessions of a Control Freak is a memoir blog series exploring the impact of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, its origins, and the rocky path to recovery. Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of all featured individuals. Subscribe to receive all future posts. More about OCPD here.

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I

When Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder takes the reins, there are no truces or compromises—just scorched earth.

And looking back upon my years in college, frenziedly working to advance my filmmaking career, that was mostly what I saw.

My explanations for what had gone wrong demonstrated the extent of insight one might have expected of a bacterium grappling with astrophysics.

I was, the argument went, a unique, intense person. So intense in fact, I often offended the sensibilities of my fellow Australians.

The long and short of it was that, for whatever reason, I hadn’t bloomed where I’d been planted. The natural conclusion, therefore, was high time I transplanted myself to fairer climes.

Overseas, I might begin life anew, free from the brooding thunderheads of others’ disapproval and the lingering shadow of shame and self-doubt.

What I envisioned was less a relocation than a reinvention; an opportunity to become someone successful and well-liked, whose company was sought by all and sundry.

My first place of choice was Germany. Germans were, according to my general understanding, about as direct and upfront as they came. They surely would be able to tolerate—no, appreciate—my blunt honesty.

As an outsider (or Ausländer, according to Pimsleur German Level One), I could also expect to enjoy the kind of interpersonal amnesty normally afforded to visitors. My differences in temperament and character would, I hoped, go excused.

And Germany, as it turned out, had a sturdy, if not small, filmmaking industry. Not quite Australian cottage industry level, but neither was it the European version of Hollywood.

Then again, Hollywood couldn’t really hold a candle to a country where belting out an enthusiastic “Das stimmt!” or “Super!” was readily tolerated.

And the menus in Los Angeles, I was certain, would never yield such warble-worthy compound nouns as “Schweinebraten mit Semmelknödel”.

There was also the fact the United States had never had any monarch, let alone one of equal caliber to “Fairy Tale King” Ludwig II, a closeted eccentric who commissioned the Neo-Romanesque wonder that was and is Neuschwanstein Castle.

Sure—I might be cherry-picking reasons, but for someone intent on escape, any justifications would do.

And so I booked my ticket, and mere weeks after completing my undergraduate degree, I departed for Germany.

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II

It was my first northern hemisphere Fall. The weather in Berlin was, according to locals, mild, but walking the streets of Kreuzberg in November 2008, I often felt like I was wandering the Siberian tundra in a pair of briefs.

On blustery days, the wind would tear right through my frame, transforming my exposed fingers into half-frozen cocktail weiners. 

At night, the mercury plunged and I was stricken with bouts of asthmatic coughing. 

When my host offered to turn on the heating, I—conscious of the gas bill I would partially be responsible for—insisted in between coughs that no…I was not sick…and would do…perfectly fine…with the heating…off…thank you.

Though I had scrimped and saved in the lead-up to my trip, I had only a few thousand dollars in my bank account. 

Even Couchsurfing with a friend and a distant relative, I had nowhere near enough to cover the basics of my stay.

The only way I would survive was, at least in my fear-riddled mind, to cling to my miserly ways. 

But hiding from the weather in the confines of the apartment, as poorly insulated as it was, I could only do so for so long. 

In my defense, Australia was a country without true seasons. Growing up in the tropics, I recall spending most days wearing little more than a shirt, board shorts, and sandals. 

But in Berlin, dressing proved a cumbersome process, involving at least the application of four layers of clothing.

Even then, rugged up, I was in a constant torpor, shuffled from train station to supermarket with all the speed of someone using a walking frame.

“Could we perhaps move a little faster?” my host called back one time, from a distance of 12 feet.

But haste could not be coaxed out of me, not at least until I was within dashing distance of a store or cafe with indoor heating.

Sitting in the furnace-like interior, I would wait for various parts of my body to defrost, removing articles of clothing piecemeal to compensate for my sudden-onset sweating. 

Then, when it came time to leave ahead, I would have to put each of them back on, one by one, a process I quickly came to begrudge.

Despite these challenges, I managed to drag myself to and from German lessons in neighboring Neukölln on an almost daily basis. 

The short ride took me past an overgrown graveyard, corner cafes, and roast chestnut vendors, and might have been enjoyable, had I not often found myself caught in horizontal sleet, cursing into the thin summer scarf I was using as a muffler.

After the first month of furiously studying German and applying for jobs, I paid a visit to a nearby film college, where I was told in no uncertain terms that I could not apply until after I had become a fluent speaker.

Still, I told myself this obstacle, just like my dislike of the cold, was one that could be surmounted with enough time and diligence.

Yet my bank account balance was rapidly depleting, and to make matters worse, the world—as my mother soon advised me—was on the cusp of a financial crisis.

Crisis, schmisis, I said, when she first broke the news. What point was there in dwelling on forces outside of our control?

Besides, I had come this far—wasn’t that proof enough of the power of determination?

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III

But with no job offers forthcoming and my account balance perilously low, I outgrew this conviction.

By late December, I conceded defeat and advised my parents I was going to head home. 

“You know I’m really disappointed,” my dad said. “I thought at the very least you would try to stay and make it work out.”

Apparently, he was under the belief that I’d spent the past three months strolling through French Provence vineyards or lapping cocktails at an Amsterdam dive bar.

Little did he know I had been locked in a frantic hunt for a job that had taken me from the Czech Republic to Barcelona, Spain. 

Highlights of my trip—if that was what you could call it—had included acquiring public lice at a youth hostel, racing through a frozen forest in pitch darkness to catch a train, and cramming my starving face at a 10-euro all-you-can-eat sushi train in Barcelona.

All that time, I had been in limbo, not knowing where I would land, or how I would survive. 

To remain in Europe would have been stubborn beyond reason—a description that in other circumstances, I would have eagerly lived up to.

And so, wanderlust temporarily slaked, I returned to Australia with my head hung and was met with a surprisingly strict reception. 

I could crash at folks’ place on the condition I paid rent and worked as a server at their restaurant until I had paid back all the money they had loaned me during my trip.

By February, my death grip on the filmmaking future I had once envisaged was failing, and the angst that had first propelled me to travel abroad remained as strong as ever.

But given the deplorable state of my finances, I was grounded indefinitely.

In my search for an exit hatch, I decided I would put my Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages certificate to use by teaching English in China.

Outside of the big metropolitan centers like Beijing and Shanghai, life for an English teacher—according to the forum posts I read by expatriates currently living in Asia—could actually be quite comfortable. 

The immediate consideration at the forefront of my mind was not the language barrier, but my dietary requirements. 

For years I had suffered what I’d concluded were gluten and dairy intolerance, the existence of which was not common knowledge in mainland China.

Eating out would therefore prove particularly difficult—an inconvenience I would nevertheless need to have to overcome. 

The only alternative open to me was, after all, stasis. And after months of living under my parents’ roof again, I needed this out.

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IV

When I asked my dad if he would be willing to spring for a plane ticket, promising that I was good for it, his response was completely unreasonable.

“But what about the money you already owe us?”

Catching wind of my plan, my mother’s anxiety finally boiled over.

“You know, you’re just like your siblings,” she said during one car drive when we were alone. 

“Always making bad decisions. Never learning from your mistakes.”

I bridled at these claims. To compare me to my brother and sister was completely uncalled for. There was no contest. I won every time, hands down.

As for my mother’s criticisms, was it really my fault she could see the inherent genius of my plan?

Another attempt to establish myself in a country where I knew next to no one wasn’t a continuation of the same broken logic that had inspired my last trip. Rather, it was a strategic evolution.

And anyway, what did she know of my overwhelming need to prove my worth—if only to myself?

Rather than responding, however, I fidgeted with levers and knobs on the underside of my car seat.

“How do I put this thing back?” I asked.

“First it was Germany, now China,” my mother said, refusing to be thrown off. “When are you going to realize?”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“You know, it’s a simple thing, Essy,” my mother retorted. “Why can’t you just work it out?”

“Because it’s not my car!” I shouted at her.

I spent the rest of the trip stewing over my mother’s accusations. By the time we got home, I had reverted completely to my resentful teen self, announcing my anger with the slamming of my bedroom door.

All of a sudden, I found myself wrestling with old feelings of failure; the sense of being trapped in a relationship I had run from four years prior.

When I had first moved out, I had made it clear that if my parents wanted me to continue being an active part of their life, things would need to change. No more maternal dictatorship, no more paternal criticisms.

My parents, for their part, had tried to honor the terms of our truce, but this latest attack represented, at least in my imagination, the worst kind of violation.

There was nothing for it—I was going to leave without notice, and so send a very clear message to my mother: “You’re not the boss of me!”

I tossed my suitcase onto the floor, thumping books into it and yanking clothes from hangers. 

Hearing this commotion, my mother appeared at the door.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Leaving,” I said. Mom took a step into the room.

“Where will you go?” 

“I don’t know,” I said, fighting back tears. 

“Please don’t,” my mother said, her manner switching from stonewalling judge to frightened child.

Part of me had believed that nothing—not even my unexplained departure—was capable of breaking the hard shell of my mother’s resentment. 

And yet the mere possibility of it had exposed the terror it sought to protect.

My mother wrapped her arms around me, half-pleading, half-restraining. 

“Let go of me,” I said.

“Please,” she said. “I’m begging you. Don’t leave.”

“I have to,” I said. And it was the truth.

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Confessions of a Control Freak continues with Part 5: “An enforcer of standards”.