Unpacking Your Own Baggage

I just wrote a really long email to someone about forgiveness and understanding.

I can literally sit down and figure out why everyone who ever wronged me did what they did.
And, for the most part I have.
I took the time to know them well enough to understand them and the ‘why’.

Granted, until 6 or 7 years ago, and even still sometimes, my first instinct is to wonder what I did wrong. But this has lessened over the years.

I went through a breakup recently. It didn’t stick, but I was pretty amazed at my reaction to it in the moment.

Theoretically and historically, I should have been decimated, devastated, a crying puddle on the ground. And I did cry, and I cocooned a bit. But instead of falling down the self-deprecation rabbithole (that for me has no end) I just decided it was because I hadn’t dyed my hair. Ridiculous, yes, but something that I could easily fix.

Instead I put myself in his shoes and understood as best I could. And dyed my hair.

And I decided to make some changes to my life, for me.

I cannot control other people’s actions, I can only control my reactions to them.

This was a person who I love and care about beyond measure, there is no flip switch that turns that off if he doesn’t do what I want him to do.

Everything is better than fine now because things we couldn’t promise in words have been proven by actions.

I have abandonment issues and this blog is explanation for that in and of itself. A treasure trove of the times I have been left. And that’s okay.

For every one of them that left, they all came back eventually, and I got my answers. But the funny thing is I didn’t need them. And maybe that’s why.

I forgive. It’s what I do.

Sure, I mourn their absence, I obviously wanted them around in the first place or they wouldn’t have been in my life. But everyone has their own path and that’s okay.

Final Boss would have had to rise above the familiarity and comfort of mediocrity to be with me. Babe, I get it, I struggle with this every day, and it’s hard. I am the queen of underachieving and meeting someone who sees your potential and wants to stick around and support it is fucking terrifying and hard.

It would be easy to get mad and say he used me, and he kinda did, but I allowed it. I didn’t do anything for him that I wouldn’t have done for anyone else if they needed it. He paid me back eventually and I hold no grudge, never really did.

All of this is neither here nor there.

Everyone has baggage, myself included. The secret is realizing a lot of things you are carrying never really belonged to you in the first place. It’s a lot of their issues they put on you and you decided to keep.

I posted this to my Facebook page and good God did people get mad at me.

Go ahead, be mad.

Hold grudges, live with your hate, hold it in your fist and see how badly you get burned.
Keep sipping the poison other people handed you when they wronged you and complain when you get sick.

It just seems like a colossal waste of time to allow someone who hurt you to continue to do so by your own choice.

As far as I can tell, I have this moment, this one right here that I am living in, and unless I am in the midst of a trauma, this moment may not be perfect, but I’m here.

If I closed myself off to experiences based on the bad experiences I have had, I would truly never leave the house, have a job, or speak to anyone, ever.

I got assaulted on a Tinder date a few years back. I didn’t delete Tinder or stop dating altogether. I vetted people and places to meet better, I changed how I dressed, I reported him and got on with my life.
Tinder still sucks, but that’s not the point.

I don’t know when I made the decision not to live in my trauma, but I must have.

I think it was when I was raped. He wanted me afraid, he wanted me traumatized, he wanted some semblance of control over my life even if he wasn’t in it. And for a while, I was afraid and traumatized, I still get a small shudder if I see someone of his stature approaching me on the street.

But what he wasn’t expecting is that I spent a lot of time in therapy after, not reliving the experience at all, but trying to figure out the neurological miswirings in my brain and my previous life experience that facilitated me letting someone like him into my life. I realized I had very low self esteem and was in a place of self-loathing about my job and my lifestyle.

So I fixed those things, I changed my thinking patterns and stopped self-medicating.

I came out of that experience better.

I decided I really liked my job and there was really nothing wrong with it other than society’s antiquated beliefs about female empowerment, sexuality and nudity.

Then I married Captain Save-A-Hoe and backslid like a motherfucker, and subsequently ended that 7 year mess by self-medicating again. But I started recognizing my patterns and eventually broke them.

There is that old adage about ‘living well is the best revenge’.

Revenge doesn’t factor into it for me, I just want to be happy, and holding grudges, reliving trauma or judging others isn’t conducive to happiness, nor is wallowing in my old mistakes.

Against all odds, I am alive and mostly well. This world, and some of the people in it have tried pretty hard to ruin my life, I have done a pretty bang up job of doing that for myself too. And I forgive myself. I forgive them too.

Everything I have ever done (or has been done to me) has brought me to this moment. Yes, I need a shower, and I have a couple stubborn pimples on my chin, my bed needs making, and I really ought to check on my kidlet, but I am here.

And in this moment, I am happy.