Out of Order, Chaos.

My old me would come back from a trip with the neatest suitcases, ready to be unloaded immediately, because everything had it's place. I have been home a day and some hours and my bags are still by the door. I need help!

What has happened? I keep cleaning out closets and storage, and people keep moving more stuff in...and I just shove my stuff aside to a place where it's almost inaccessible. I can't find my stuff, the stuff that makes my life mine, that makes my life work...it's under other people's stuff!

You have to understand I RARELY, if ever, buy anything...I have all this stuff, and it's very nice and I am thankful for it, but very little of it is originally mine. Some of it I needed and it came at just the right time, but alot of it I was just too nice to turn away.

It's like other people's out of control lives have taken over my space and now my space is out of control...

The stuff is just the material symbol of what is going on inside of me...other people have moved their lives into mine. I have let them! Not because they meant harm, most did not. I have not established boudaries. Not because I am a people pleaser, but because I am non combative; fighting for my rights makes me weary, and so I just don't do it.

I used to stand up for myself, but my voice was not powerful enough. Other voices were louder. So I picked up my bags and moved on. That is what I do. If a situation gets too uncomfortable, I leave. It's how I learned to live...My family left Cuba, for very good reasons, but after leaving your country and family once, with all the anxiety and pain of that, leaving became easy. I left my first marriage. I left the town where I grew up. I have left again and again.

But this time is different. A. I can't really leave. B. I don't really want to. In this chaos there is stuff I love, not to mention people I love...

I eat to feel better, to silence the screaming emotional chaos in me. I have created an inner pack rat of pain and hidden angst. Externally she weighs 70 lbs. more than she should.

So the outer chaos is the picture of the inner chaos. The inner chaos is a woman who has had too much stuff happen to her in too little time, and who has hidden, but wants to come out and BE. She doesn't want to take anything from anyone. She just wants to be. And to be allowed to be. And not be edited, critiqued, changed, suspected, misunderstood, or treated badly. She wants to learn how to stop allowing people to treat her badly, yet keep her integrity and kindness. She doesn't want to learn how to be manipulative. She doesn't want to be a star. She just wants to thrive in who she is. She wants to be ME.

Life has dismantled me. I want to find the pieces and put me back together. Or find new pieces that are even better. But they have to be MY pieces, the ones God gives ME. Not the ones everyone else wants me to use...

The process, and for sure, the end result, must be authentic.