Strange Literary Bedfellows - and Stuff

A few years back, I found myself living the opening of "Dante's Inferno"
I woke up in the middle of my life, lost in a wood, clueless as to how I'd gotten there. I had let life change so much in me that I could no longer recognize the person I'd become.
But I could still sense echoes of the real me on a different trail, over there behind the undergrowth somewhere. I became determined to find that person, walk with her, and make myself whole once more.
It took three years of stumbling and groping and cussing and crying - but I made it. It's me I smile at in the mirror again these days.

I thought about this the other day when I read something that brought to mind a scene from "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Not Enuf".
There is a marvelous description there of what I think is one of the primary stumbling blocks to both love and submission - that fear of losing our self, just as I did.

   somebody almost run off wit alla my stuff
   & i waz standin there
   lookin at myself the whole time

   & it waznt a spirit took my stuff
   waz a man whose ego walked round like Rodan’s shadow
   waz a man faster n my innocence
   waz a lover i made too much room for
   almost run off wit alla my stuff

   & i didnt know i’d give it up so quik
   & the one runnin wit it

   don’t know he got it
   & i’m shoutin this is mine
   & he dont know he got it
   my stuff is the anonymous ripped off treasure of the year
   did you know somebody almost got away wit me

   me in a plastic bag under their arm
   me danglin on a string of personal carelessness
        -Ntozake Shange

We resist letting people in, making "too much room", because we worry they'll take our stuff. And, having once lost mine, I totally get that. It's not a good feeling. In fact, it downright sucks.
But here's the thing I learned...

You can be messed with, fucked-over, soul-ravaged, and heart-broken, but no one can take you from you. Even when you give your all to someone or something else, it's more like a drag and drop copy. You may cede proprietary rights for as long as they want it, but ultimate ownership will always revert to you.

I'm not sure how we forget that.
Maybe it's not how we want to see our lives, maybe we don't want the responsibility. Maybe, like me, we just get busy and oblivious.
But the fact remains, we are the ultimate arbiters of what happens to our stuff.

We own our stuff.
Fear of losing it should never be the thing that holds us back.