Pete and Repeat – The Boys That Won’t Go Away

Hooray for a new week!  Some of my favorite outfits are up on deck this week to show you from shopping in my closet as well as some of my favorite stories and life lessons to go with them!  You’re going to see lots of repeats this week.  That was what made putting these together so fun, that I had so many pieces that worked with so many different things!!! 

In the theme of repeats, I figured we might as well talk about repeat boys.  Before your mind starts wondering to places it shouldn’t in reference to repeats (especially you people from my home town that know what a stupid teenager I was), let me clarify.  I mean those repeat offenders that you keep letting back into your life when they have proven so often that they don’t deserve to be there.  You know, the ones that you just can’t seem to cut ties with?  Maybe you’re not always the one bringing them back in, but when they show up, you don’t object.  If repeat offenders were one of those punch cards that when you fill up you get free food, I would have been able to feed my whole family last week!  Was there an old flame haunting convention in town and I missed it?

I am going to try really hard to make this short and sweet when every typing bone in my body could get started and not stop until at least a few chapters were written on just this subject.  In my complete education from the School of Hard Knocks and extreme lack of education in the area of psychology and other “guru doctorness”……here are my reasons/revelations as to why the only repeats I want in my life moving forward are good outfits, good movies and good songs on loop!  Although the following is more of a “me preaching to me” session, I am guessing there is someone else that needs to read it too!

1.  You only have one heart.  It’s so fragile.  And every time you choose to use it to invest love into someone, you give a little piece of it away (or in my case a big piece).  Whether you want to admit it or not, you literally carve out a piece of it for the person you are choosing to love.  With an organ so very fragile, shouldn’t we take extra care of it and be careful how we give it away?  Because, even though we can glue it back together, or give it some kind of repair when it breaks, it will still never be the same.  Rarely does the person who took that piece you gave them, ever give it back in the same condition it was given in.  If they didn’t handle it correctly the first time, why would we allow them to have another piece.  What happens when you have given so many pieces of your heart away that you have nothing left when the right person does come along?  
2. You are giving them permission to not change.  So, you broke the ties once (or maybe they broke them for you).  You finally begin to heal and realize that you are moving on in a better direction and that there is new opportunity for you to grow from it (or at least I hope that is the case for you).  Now, for whatever reason, they come knocking on the door of your heart again.  Maybe you invited them back out of loneliness.  Maybe they are coming back out of their own loneliness.  Either way, they’re back and your choice on whether you let them back in or not sends a louder message than you know.  Of course there are the situations where one actually does change and things actually can be repaired.  Often, those are more the exception than the rule.  Remember, the ties were broken for a reason.  And more often than not, you allowing repeat back in sends the message of “You don’t really have to change, I’ll let you back in and my guard will eventually fall enough for you to start the old habits of mistreating me again.”  Be careful of the message it sends to your own heart as well.  You could very well be letting it know “hey heart, I know you were working really hard to repair and move on, but we are gonna go backwards for a bit.”  I am not proud to admit that some have gotten not just one repeat trip, but a few.  
3. You are delaying your real prize!  When you combine one and two above, you get delay.  See, whether you see it or believe it now or not, there is that one purpose that ONLY YOU are supposed to be.  It wasn’t made for anyone else, so nobody else can receive it.  Same goes for that “one person for you”, if you will.  It’s perfectly ok that you take a rugged path to get there or that you take your time.  It’s even fine to have the hiccups of going through a few wrong people.  BUT, if you don’t move from them and you allow them back, you are only delaying the greatest happening of your life.  You just are.  Man, that hurts to type and swallow for me right now!  I will tell you that finally truly believing that I deserve what is supposed to be for me and believing that there really is something THAT GREAT coming, has made it much easier for me lately to “cut the cord” a lot quicker with repeat bad things in my life (whether it be relationships of any kind, food, unhealthy thoughts, etc).  I want to get to the good that I know is there waiting and I do not want any more delays that I bring upon myself!  Make sense?
4. You are risking an avalanche.  When you allow the repeats and give just that tiny opening for the brokenness to come back in, it is almost inevitable that it will affect other things in your life as well.  In my situation, it just opens the flood gates for negativity and it usually starts with me attacking myself.  It’s not secret that I am already battling that daily as it is.  It took more restraint than you know not to make this post about all the horrible things I see in these pictures (huge legs, puffy wrists, seven chins, etc).  But, if I take a stand against not allowing repeat “bad heart treaters” in my life, then that includes repeat self-hate.

As usual, I rattled way more than I intended to!  I hope that you get what I am saying and that you truly understand how precious you and that big ol’ heart of yours are!  Let’s end the repeat boys right there and get over to some good repeats, like this outfit! 🙂  This chami was purchased for less than a Sonic drink and goes with SO MANY things in my closet!  First up, is how it looks with this cardigan.  Don’t you just love a long cardigan?  I will have to have the same talk with myself as I do every year.  I will stand in the mirror and say “Alicia, you cannot wear a cardigan every single day this fall/winter.  You have to give the other great pieces in your closet some love too!”.  

Before you go, can we also just please take a minute to drool over these FABULOUS shoes and that great hat?  My exchange student insisted that I bring the hat into the wardrobe family and I am so glad she did!!  These shoes.  Well, these shoes are filling a hole that no man could fill anyway right now! :p