Chapter 7: How to Let Go When You’re Addicted to Control

Lei Wine Bar, controlling the outcome, and monotony

I’ve been thinking about becoming a streamer. Yes, in a career way. What if I just started streaming my life, like The Truman Show? Hey, it’s me. Sitting here eating Simple Mills crackers, obsessing over Kim Kardashian’s JPG croc shoulder Birkin. The irony is that streaming might be the closest I can get to surrender. No edits, no filters, no way to control how I come across. It’s exposure therapy for someone addicted to control.

The first time I ever felt truly alive was when I moved to New York. Everyone says your first year in the city feels like a movie, but mine felt more like the MGMT song Kids. I floated through the streets with my headphones in, convinced the universe had made a personal soundtrack for me. My friends who’d been here longer used to call me “phase one,” the stage where you think a piece of trash on the sidewalk is art and someone yelling “fuck you” is just New York charm. I can still remember what it felt like to wake up with that sense of possibility. Anything could happen. And most days, something did.

Now I keep wondering if I outgrew that feeling or if the city did. A couple of weeks ago, I had an olive with celery in it, and that was the most exciting thing to happen to me in a while. Life used to feel like an iPod commercial. Walking across the Williamsburg Bridge, hair in the wind, after a sleepover with a guy who liked Joan Didion, future unknown. Now it feels like buffering.

So let’s try something new. I’ve decided to take a leap and launch the private side of How to Function: IRL classes, monthly talks, gifts, and more.

We’re actually doing it. I’m doing it. From a real place, or at least I’m trying to. I’ve made enough mistakes to know the only place worth building from is the bottom of your own heart, or what people like to call authenticity. Our first paid event for subscribers will be in November. I’m calling it Friend of Function, which three out of four of my best friends hate, so I’ll probably change the name two or three times before it lands. Name suggestions welcome.

On Wednesday, I did what you could call a bar crawl for someone in their late thirties. I stopped by Bar Olivier to see Aisa and ordered the shrimp, then popped into Bridges. I didn’t eat there but decided on a mezcal highball instead of a martini. Someone told me changing up your routine invites new energy. Let’s see if ordering a new drink does the trick. Then I went to Lei Wine, where Bowen Yang was sitting up front. I’m still starstruck by the SNL cast; it’s a cultural institution I can always count on. Annie, who owns Lei (and King), is the sweetest, and they just launched a Substack. I waved to someone I thought I knew but didn’t, and someone else complimented my faux-leather jacket. Overall, a win.

Just like I know Lorne Michaels isn’t going anywhere, I have an appetite for monotony. I watch Sex and the City on repeat because I already know what happens. I read the last page of a book first. I never realized how much I needed control until I started losing it. My life right now feels like everything spirituality warns you about: uncertainty, surrender, trust.

In my session with Cynthia, I sat there dumbfounded, asking, What do I do now? Where do I get the answers from? She told me something insane, that it would probably take two years to shift fully into the person I want to be. Which, of course, made me cry even more. The result is me asking the universe to guide me, meditating, and re-reading Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. I keep underlining lines that feel like they were written directly for me.

The paradox of control and detachment

• To obtain anything in the physical world, you must let go of your attachment to it. You can maintain your intention while releasing attachment to a specific outcome.

• The pursuit of security is an illusion and an attachment to the known, which is essentially the limitations of past conditioning.

• Detachment offers the wisdom of uncertainty, leading to freedom from the past and the known.

Allowing life to unfold

• Forcing solutions or demanding specific outcomes can hinder the joy and manifestation you seek. Step back and release the need for things to conform to your expectations.

• Solutions can emerge naturally from problems, even amidst confusion and chaos.

• Detachment makes you less likely to force solutions, allowing you to remain open to other possibilities.

Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to live streaming. For once, I can’t edit what happens. There’s no reshoot if I say something dumb or if there’s a piece of cheese on my face. It’s chaos I can’t polish, and it’s starting to turn me on.

I used to think if I just worked harder, called one more investor, sent one more deck, I could fix everything. But fixing is its own addiction. Control disguised as faith. It looks like refreshing your bank app every twenty minutes. Drafting emails you don’t send. Pretending everything is fine when it isn’t. Waking up with a hangover from your own thoughts.

The breakdown isn’t a prelude to the comeback. The breakdown is the point. It’s the burning off of a self that can’t keep pretending. It’s losing control not because you want to, but because you’ve run out of ways to hold on. Surrender is a form of humiliation. It’s saying, I don’t know how this ends, but I’m open to the possibilities.

Lately I’ve been wondering how to live with uncertainty, and maybe even enjoy it. It’s probably why I’m not dating. I’ve already broken up with myself before I even open Raya. My early programming taught me that love was conditional, approval was achievement, and safety was being pleasing. Letting go of control means letting go of those rules, and I’m still learning how to do that without disappearing entirely.

Who knows what will happen this week… but I might be finally open to receiving.

I wish I could tell you every secret right now, but I can’t. Maybe by January. I’ve dug myself into a deep hole, and sometimes I want to crawl inside it like the empty bath. But other times I step out into the light and remember: I might just be crazy enough to pull off a miracle.

Somehow, functioning,
Jilly