Emotional Baggage

Emotional Baggage

“The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none”  ~Thomas Carlyle

Many of us carry a lot of emotional baggage.                                       

Urban Dictionary defines emotional baggage as:

1. Painful memories, mistrust and hurt carried around from past sexual or emotional rejection.

2. An excuse commonly used by Peter Pans and other immature men to avoid commitment yet maintain a sexual relationship.  Ex. “I don't think I can handle a real relationship right now. I need some time to get over my emotional baggage.”

When we focus on the hurts (real or imagined) of the past, it is hard to look to a bright future. We harbor resentment. We replay every painful moment. We feel the pain over and over. Like a jukebox stuffed with quarters, playing the same song over and over. We become bitter, pessimistic, vengeful, repetitive, afraid, and BORING!

That’s right . .  Boring. Find a friend you can trust to be totally honest, and ask them if they are bored with hearing about your past relationships – the ones that “got away”, hurt you, are jerks, broke your heart, etc. If a friend is bored, imagine how a potential mate will feel.

So, what should you do? Like the jukebox that is driving you crazy, pull the plug. . . . GET OVER IT!!!

“Sure,” you say, “that sounds easy, but you don’t know what I’ve been through!” The thing is . . .  so what! Most people have been hurt by someone. In fact, chances are, many have been through much worse than you have. Look around and you decide which ones are the happy ones. They are the ones that got over it!! They don’t dwell on the past; they look forward to the future. Some people that have been through the worst are the happiest people . . . because they let it go!

Say goodbye to non-soul mate love. If you are in a dead relationship, let go. While you are at it, get rid of reminders of old love. You don’t want to hang on to old hurts any longer. Clean out your closet. Toss out all that “stuff” that drains you, keeping you in a perpetual negative fog. Remove things that keep you stuck in the past. It can be great therapy cleaning out closets, drawers, photo albums and rooms of things that still produce painful memories. Anything that causes a negative feeling needs to go. Do you have clothes in your closet that you don’t wear anymore, but are reminders of a past hurt. Get rid of it!

Unshackle yourself from these negative forces in your life. Work through the pain, and then let it go. If you need a ceremony to help you let go, burn some of these memories, bury them in a box, or some other ritual that symbolizes that these are over, gone, and will not return.

                Now is a good time to take a break from dating, while you work on YOU. You can go out with friends, do things by yourself, take classes, whatever you want, but stay away from dating. Sounds like a drastic measure, right? Well, think about where your life is right now. Why are you reading this? It isn’t because you have already found your soul mate. So, trust me. You can’t get through some of these exercises if you are emotionally attached to anyone right now. They will fog your vision, and make it difficult to be objective. You need to be objective. It doesn’t have to be for long. Just do your homework. Then, when you are ready, you will know what you are looking for, and you will not waste your time, and emotions, on someone that isn’t right for you. You came to me for help, so take my advice!      

While you’re at it, get rid of your clutter. Are you a pack rat? Do you collect “stuff” that just sits and takes up space, just in case “some day” you might need it? Do you have piles of papers, magazines, or old mail sitting on counters, tables, chairs? Is your garage so full of junk that you can’t park your car in it?  If your soul mate were to walk into your home today, would you be embarrassed to show them around? If so, you are filling your life with “stuff” instead of love. Why do you hold on to material things that don't help you?  Would you allow a television to sit in your entertainment center if it did not work? Chances are, you use “things” to fill the emptiness inside. But, these “things” also keep you from having room for someone. Given a choice, would you pick “things” or “love”? You know the answer to that; after all, you’re reading this. So, get to it, clean up your messy life so there is “room” for someone.

                If you don’t believe that this has anything to do with finding love, you are still in the wrong frame of mind. Clutter is just another form of baggage. Clutter allows us to create an excuse to hide behind. If you have a cluttered home, think about how many times you have said (not necessarily out loud), “I can’t go today, because I have to clean house” or “I would love to have people over, but there is no room” or “ I will get around to that just as soon as I (fill in the blank) at home.” If you see yourself in these comments, you have clutter holding you back from love, excitement, and fun.

Another thing clutter does is fills your mind with guilt. You start thinking “when I get this done,” “after I finish this,” “once I do this,” so that you can’t focus on the important things.  We have to let go of all baggage to find love. Think of baggage and clutter as anchors that hold you down. If you were attached to an anchor at sea, you would drown. On dry land, it is like a ball and chain.

The word clutter, according to wikipedia, means:

• a confused multitude of things
• fill a space in a disorderly way
• muddled
• untidy

Clutter is a term used for unwanted echoes in electronic systems, particularly in reference to 

• radars. Such echoes are typically returned from ground, sea, rain, animals/insects, chaff and atmospheric turbulences, and can cause serious performance issues with radar systems.
• Clutter is a term used to describe the phenomenon of a marketplace being full or even overcrowded with products. Clutter is a major problem for marketers and advertisers.
• a confused disordered jumble of things; background echos, from clouds etc, on a radar screen; to fill something with clutter
• cluttered - filled or scattered with a disorderly accumulation of objects or rubbish;
• cluttering - A speech disorder characterized by fast, jerky, or irregular speech, which often sounds like stuttering; An instance of cluttered speech
• When an advertisement is surrounded by other ads, thereby forcing it to compete for the readers attention or the extent to which a publication’s ...

As you may have noticed, there is not a single positive definition for clutter. Clutter causes confusion, chaos, disorder. Apply any of these definitions to a relationship, and it is sure to be disastrous. Can you see, now, why you need to remove all of it from your life?

Removing these weights is all part of a purifying experience to prepare you for the next step.

No, this was not my house, but would you invite someone here?

Does this help?  Here is my story:

I was living in a five bedroom house, filled with the clutter, junk, and memories of over 30 years of adulthood, and five children. Most of my children had left home, but left their junk behind, and each time I moved, I moved all this junk with me. I was overweight. I had a list a mile long of things I wanted to complete before I even thought about having a man in my life.

At my youngest child’s request (he was 16), I got a job in another state, and had to move quickly. I was still working at the job I would soon be leaving, and being a single mother, could not afford to get help moving.

           My son was very excited about the move, and I made it clear to him that he would have to help. One day, he and a friend borrowed a 16 foot trailer and proceeded to literally pitch “things” out the second floor window onto the trailer and hauled them to the dump. Thirty two loads later, my house contained about one fifth of the original contents, which all nicely fit into a 24 foot rental truck. At first, I was furious, but I wasn’t going to the dump to find anything, so I let it go. To this day, I cannot think of anything that was dumped that I have missed, or regretted losing.

We moved into a 3 bedroom apartment with the things we had left. Amazingly, I no longer had a problem keeping the house clean, as all the clutter was gone. There were no piles to move from space A to space B so we could get things done. The study only had computer and study things. Our bedrooms were neat and uncluttered. My bed was even made each morning. I could find things in my kitchen. The living room was always presentable, so there were no excuses for not having someone over.  And, amazingly, I had TIME. Time to do things I have always wanted to do. Time to relax. . . . Time to think about what I wanted in life. . . . Time to realize that I was lonely (I had been single now for 13 years). . .  and Time to focus on the list of qualities that would make my perfect man. I had made this list eleven years earlier, but had not focused on it.  Now, I could read this list, memorize this list, and be ready to recognize “him” when I met him. I also had time to work on me!

In less than a year, I met my soul mate. If my living room had been a mess, or my house a disaster, I would never have opened the door that day that brought him into my life. Had I been worrying about “when I,” “if I.” or “as soon as I finish,” I would not have accepted that first date. But because I had uncluttered my life and said goodbye to things that tied me to the past, I was able to recognize him. I was able to be myself, and had nothing keeping me from falling in love.

               

A man is as big as the things that annoy him

~ anonymous