Imagine sitting on your bar stool at home while you watch a flood encompass your home. It is a surreal sight to see. You first start to notice the water crawling up your walls going higher and higher. Then the water reaches your first shelf of books. Gone. Next, they might take over the second shelf with your signed yearbooks and photographs, that you placed carefully and creatively in your scrapbooks. Gone. Next goes your clothing, and then your pots, and pans in the kitchen. You sit there awaiting a neighbor to rescue you in their family’s canoe. Once they come to rescue you, and you are safely on the second floor of your neighbor’s home you start to consider and grow more aware of all the things you’ve lost.

“Things,” well this is what you have to be more aware of. Things are just things, they are simply items that you’ve acquired in your life that seemed to add up every day. The things you owned bring you joy and pleasure or so you thought…

As the storm passes you are able to walk through the doors of your once perfect and dry home. You see the water line on your stained walls. Now it’s time to pack up the belongings that survived this disaster and prepare to move to your parents home or an apartment.

Once you arrive and start unpacking your things at your temporary home you reflect on what life has done to you. Do you feel sad, angry, or relieved? All of these feelings are normal. When this happened to me I had lost all of my personal items. I felt traumatized. How could I go on knowing I lost almost everything that was important to me. After a few weeks, I realized this wasn’t the case. These things didn’t make me happy.

continue to part 2