control
a collab
A post by Samu and a following conversation made me think about control respectively the fear of loosing control. We talked about it and then decided to work together on that theme.
This post includes artwork and a poem by me and an essay by Samu.
cutting tight patterns into my dissolving body —I’m loosing shape drowning in an endless sea of viscid emptiness dark liquid suffocating me
I breathe
pain
into the
absolute abstraction
of light
of life
—around me
inside mesmiling struggling to keep the facade (behind) a perfect construct of fake control I binge on extreme emotions just to feel —anything I starve away the indecisiveness exercise away the numbness
closing my eyes to the desert inside swallowing colors with a keen edge knife I draw the outlines —don’t look into the void
I try
but
who will I be
when the intoxication
subsides?THE CONTROLLED SELF An essay about order, fear, and the art of not breaking. Control is often sold as a virtue as maturity, as strength. A person is considered “stable” when they grit their teeth and no one hears how loud it burns inside. We grow up in a culture that treats one sentence like a law: “Trust is good, control is better.” But that was never wisdom; it was training in vigilance. A lineage of tension, passed down like old porcelain no one is allowed to drop. Yet control is rarely strength. Control is conditioning a quiet inheritance from childhoods where feelings needed more space than anyone was willing to give. You learn early what is desired: silence, functioning, a smile kept at room volume, a tidy environment so no one sees how chaotic the inside is. We call it discipline, though it is often nothing but survival in power-saving mode. Society loves controlled bodies bodies that function without joy and fill their emptiness with screens because silence would reveal too much truth. Souls that think obediently and stay smoothly quiet. Inner worlds that look clean and remain carefully locked. And when someone breaks, everyone acts surprised, even though the crack has been cultivated for years. Control is not character; it is instruction. People are taught to place their needs under their own feet and are later praised for being “so strong.” But strength without softness is only an elegant form of freezing. Many controlled lives are nothing more than artfully folded non-feeling. I know people who would rather count calories than desires, who portion relationships like work hours, who preach order because chaos reminds them of something they cannot allow anyone to see. People who say “boundaries” when they mean fear. “Independence” when closeness moves them too deeply. “Order” when a storm is already raging inside. I have seen people cling to control so tightly that their entire life looks like a perfectly set table inside a burning house. Control does not kill quickly; it numbs, it dulls, it narrows until creativity becomes quiet, intuition dries up, tenderness freezes. Until the body hardens into a shell and the gaze locks like a vault. Eventually stability begins to feel like a cage one guards out of duty. Perhaps we do not need to release control but expose it not as virtue but as symptom, not as strength but as an answer to an old pain that never belonged to us. And perhaps freedom begins not as a leap but as a small, honest trembling — the moment we no longer stand stiff but pause, feel something we have gripped too tightly for too many years: a fear finally allowed to speak, beginning its long walk toward no longer ruling us. For everyone who learned to be quiet to be loved. For everyone who mistakes control for safety, even though they already know it burns softly. “Control is not protection. It is the story that forms when no one hears your pain.” Samu










Samu, Your words continue to speak the truth, often not speaking until triggered. Wildflower, your illustrations, photographs, parallel the words with more unspoken, yet felt, truth. Thank you, Fondy, Michael
Very cool