The Act of Submission

Before leaving for our quick road trip on Thursday, I submitted some poems to Wicked Alice. I was excited. The idea of being counted as a writer and having a few poems on display with other writers was super special to me.
Unfortunately, I haven't heard anything back. This isn't weird or sad. Writers often speak to the process of submitting work and then receiving the inevitable rejections and how this is all a part of what creates a real writer. I'm not really a real writer though. I just wanted to hear some good news and carry on my merry way.
It felt so benign at first, just sending some things I'd been working on off to a random email address. Then I was embarrassed. Now I'm stuck on the idea that so much, such an essential component to so many things in life, is submission. Not in the gross S&M way. (Not judging if anyone who is in to S&M ever happens across this blog, but I'm not, so it seems gross from the outside.)
The course my life has taken over my 20s has led my to believe that there's little a person can actually physically control. I can control my car, for the most part. But I can't control what happens to me on the road. This is probably why people become obsessive about some of the more manageable things in life like eating and home decor (and sex).
I want to be able to let it all go. To adopt the mantra of a tiny leaf on the water or some shit like that, but I don't want to shatter the allusion of control. I work very hard at maintaining that network of tiny lies for myself, knowing it's a false sense of security, but still hanging on to it all the same. And somehow I feel like the effort of the allusion points me in the right direction or keeps me sane enough to get through difficult times and these are important things.
Submitting in some way, means recognizing that you're part of a process or condition. So perhaps I'm not reeling wildly through the wind, but I am part of the randomness of life. I am subject to the strange way life throws things together and in this juxtapose, there's often some of the most outrageous beauty of profound hilarity. Not to get too schmaltzy, but I'm sometimes so glad for the wonder of it all. It makes it easier to shrug and say, I have no idea.