First 2 Bags Fly Free

I think of love as swinging at the piñata: some people will set you up and help you succeed because everyone wins when you break it open; others will let you miss, smack yourself in the face, and then laugh at you because they think better you than them. We’ve all been hurt by swinging our stick too wildly in the name of love. What we don’t always realize is some of us keep swinging blindfolded or choose the 300 pound stick to swing with. This is love, not demolition or rocket science. I know because I’ve done rocket science and had more success with demolition. We have certainly all done our part to demolish our own love lives. I’ve observed that men seem to fall in love right away or not at all while women seem to need time to grow to love someone. Regardless, it can be hard to please a partner when they’ve already decided your future with them before getting to understand you. The fundamental difference and obstacle we seem to have to overcome is the communication gap: men and women simply communicate differently. Add in each person’s emotional baggage and it’s no wonder we don’t even begin to understand each other and ultimately part ways before realizing each others’ true potential. Everyone wants that one special person but sometimes it takes more than one person to unlock all of you. The thing about dating is you must have a sense of who you are as an individual going in because a bad relationship will spin you around and push everything onto you creating baggage that would rival Princess Vespa’s match set in Spaceballs. At some point, we have all destroyed that new relationship based on the baggage we carry from past experiences. Of course, rarely do we see those failures as our fault. With baggage, we push people away rather than let them in. It’s one thing to be picky, choosy, and not tolerate bad behavior, but it’s another thing to act based upon past transgressions that have nothing to do with the current person in your life other than to remind you of what happened before. Then again, the truth is we all have baggage and take out on the new one what the last ones did to us. Sometimes, I think it’s better to be able to say I live baggage free than drama free. We've all been with shitty partners so you can’t always judge someone for choosing a bad partner. It’s not their fault the one they chose turned out so bad, but a red flag definitely goes up when a pattern of bad choices emerges. There is a reason that the same things happen repeatedly and eventually you have to realize it has nothing to do with the other people since the one commonality is you. It can be a mind trip dealing with people who are coming off bad relationship experiences. The important thing to discover is how they dealt with and overcame their negative experiences to learn, change, grow, and evolve after their mistakes or lack thereof. I came to a realization this spring that I too had my baggage. I was fixated on having certain things be a certain way, the same way they were with the one I loved before. I didn’t have the patience or foresight to realize that I was judging my new relationships based on stale criteria. While I was eager to get our new relationship, experiences, and feelings to be as good as I had known before, I was really trying to relive the glory days and couldn’t accept that my game had changed. Naturally, my new partners were never comfortable living in someone else’s shadow that I never fully realized I was casting. My frustrations got to the point where less and less needed to be done to set off my negative reactions. Now, I've learned you have to keep an open mind to create new and better experiences because you can’t love the same way with everyone. Encumbered by baggage, some people can’t move on; they can’t fly free. So people tend to stick to what they know but then wonder why the same things keep happening to them over and over again. There is only stagnation in playing it safe. The ability to know and control all is not as great as it sounds. We need challenges and obstacles in life to learn from, to overcome so we can make our lives better. Baggage forms when we don’t deal with the root cause of our problems and negative experiences. Baggage becomes a burden, a hindrance and inhibits us from taking the most from new experiences, new relationships because we fear the past and how it made us feel. Truthfully, there is little to gain in numbing ourselves to the world because of hurt from past failures. So we can choose to retreat to what we know and is familiar, but in doing so we have to settle for and become accepting of less. I feel life was simpler when I wasn’t romantically involved with women. Life was easier, better even. I’ve sometimes wished I could go back to when there were no past hurts, no games, and no baggage that influenced so strongly. Back then, I didn’t need anyone and my love was pure. But I don’t think it’s possible because that naiveté, that innocence is lost. We all have baggage, but why do we allow it to linger and adversely affect our potential to love and be loved? Maxwell says it best, “you can make it disappear, all you got to do is just raise up, face up, stay up.” We can all shed our baggage to fly free and it starts with forgiving and loving ourselves. I’ve grown to focus on positive lessons and see each experience as unique. So looking back, each woman I’ve been with has ultimately taught me something about women, love, and myself. We have to decide for ourselves if it’s better to play it safe and take familiar and comfortable or continue to take a risk for something amazing. If you fail, you can dust yourself off and try again once you let go of hurt and move forward. In love, there is always the risk of getting hurt again, but no risk, no reward. Life is a constant process that takes time, and time heals all wounds. Just remember that life is hard enough, so there’s no reason to live yours with a 500 pound gorilla on your back.