Maybe There's Calm in the Chaos?

I grew up in a semi chaotic household. Not chaotic as in “busy”, but the chaos slid more on a madness scale. My parents were super young when they had me, they got married after I was born, and divorced before I could even remember. Don’t get me wrong; I was a very happy child. I just got accustomed to chaos.

The older I got, the more I realized the chaos. My parents were not friends, and barley even checked the “friendly” box for a while. One parent liked to have a little too much fun after work, and I’d be sat in after school program the last to leave. They were at the bar and forgot it was their turn to pick me up. The other married the walking definition of an abusive psychopath. There was always yelling echoing through the house, berating each other constantly. I didn’t grow up in calm energy.

When I got to my early twenties my parents became friends again, they ditched their bad relationships with fun and psychopaths, and I left my own emotionally abusive relationship. Calm crept in, and it came quickly. It never occurred to me that I would have to adjust to the calm.

Looking back- I realize, I’ve been recreating my own chaos ever since. Going after emotionally unavailable people, sabotaging the good relationships, unable to settle with a career path in school. I never learned how to deal with the calm. Chaos I knew I could handle. I was afraid of the ease. What if I got comfortable with the calm and it went away? So I go around like Wreck It Ralph merciless on my own life. What a first world problem to have, right?

Again, don’t get me wrong - I’m so grateful that calm has come into my life. But I never accepted it. So how do I stop the process? I feel like the first step to embracing it is realizing that I’m not. Step two is to eliminate my self-made chaos. Who or what have I brought into my life as a disrupter? It’s time to embrace the calm, and accept chaos will come on its own in its own way. But it’s time I stop hand feeding it.