Baggage Claim
It’s nearly 10:30pm on a Wednesday. The house is dark and quiet. Nick and the pups are fast asleep as they have been for a while now. Then there is me...deep in thought, per usual.
I’m wiping tears from my face as I just finished watching Hillbilly Elegy and I’m feeling all the feels. If you haven’t watched it, I encourage you to do so. I think for far more of us than not, it will instantly bring up some of your past. For others, you won’t understand it all but it still paints a picture of what life was like for a lot of people growing up.
Why am I bringing this up? Why does it even matter? Simply because baggage is a real thing and we all have it. And it comes with us everywhere we go.
Something that’s stuck out the most to me, while watching Hillbilly Elegy, was the portrayal of JD not wanting to tell his now wife, Usha, what his upbringing was like. He wanted to keep it mostly under wraps that his mother battled drug addition in fear that she may not accept him for who he was and might even run away from their relationship. I feel like most of us have been there, concerned that our baggage is an issue and rightfully so.
Rewatching this movie brought up a conversation Nick and I had a few weeks ago. I don’t remember what prompted it but the topic of baggage came up. Not surprisingly, we both had different takes on it. I recall Nick saying that we all have baggage but we don’t need to carry it with us; that we choose whether or not we carry it. My response was a little deeper than that. In my eyes, our baggage is ours to carry and it sticks around forever. That doesn’t mean however that it needs to always be opened or any of the contents removed. We never landed on what is correct or not but rather realized there are different perspectives regarding how our baggage is handled.
I tend to keep thinking about things, long after conversations are finished. That’s just what I do and many times it’s where my writing begins. I’m a deep thinker and feel things on an even deeper level.
So let’s talk baggage. Because we all have it but we don’t always know what to do with it or where to take it or when or even if we should open it. Our baggage can come in all kinds of forms and often times there is more than one bag that we have to carry. And they can be really heavy to haul around. So what does our baggage look like? What’s in it?
Think of the baggage claim at the airport and all these bags are coming around the carousel. There are so many different pieces of luggage. Some even come with a unique feature that distinguishes it from all the others. Sometimes there are multiple bags that look the same. Regardless of what they look like…we all have baggage that we have to claim. Maybe you wish it was unclaimed at times but nevertheless it’s yours and it’s mine and we have to carry it.
Maybe you’re like me and waste mental energy playing “what’s their story” or “where are they from” or “where are they going”, trying to guess what’s in some of the bags based on how they look. But there is no way to know what’s actually inside without unzipping them. So let’s do some unpacking, shall we?!
I’m willing to bet that many bags carry much of the same, regardless of how similiar or different they appear on the outside. But rather than guess what each person is carrying around, here are some things that I believe are probably more common than not. I’m no therapist but I am a human carrying my own bags around. I think many of us are likely carrying around family dysfunction, childhood trauma, failures, regrets, abusive relationships, debts, divorce, addictions. You name it and I guarantee it’s in someone’s bag.
Why didn’t I mention anything positive? Well, because we don’t typically dwell on having to carry around good things. The term baggage insinuates that whatever it may be, it’s less than desirable and should remain zipped up and forgotten about. I’d also argue that our baggage remains with us for life whether we like it or not. I think in some instances we feel safe unpacking a little at a time, but mostly we just keep everything inside and hope the zipper never bursts and that the contents remain unknown.
I’m not the TSA and I won’t interrogate you on what you might be carrying in your bag. It’s yours and not mine and none of my business. Just like you don’t need to know what’s in mine.
The problem with our baggage isn’t necessarily that we have it and carry it around, but rather that we choose to ignore its existence. A great example of this is how we react to certain situations or circumstances in our adult life. Maybe others feel we had an over embellished reaction or outburst to a comment or situation that seemed so benign. But what if the reaction we had was a direct reflection of some past experience from our childhood? I’m not making excuses for poor behavior as an adult. I want to be clear on that. In the same breath however, no one knows what happened in our past but there is absolutely no denying that it effects us well into adulthood.
For the most part I think we do well at compartmentalizing and ignoring trivial nuances but there are things that will set us off. There are so many scenarios that I can use as examples and I’m sure you can come up with just as many yourself. At the end of the day, I think it’s important we understand everyone is carrying around their past to some degree. That baggage comes with us wherever we go. It enters marriages, parenting, friendships, political views, and so on and so forth. As we continue in one of the most heated political climates I’ve ever been part of, let’s be reminded that our values, our decisions, our moral compass is likely based off much of the baggage we carry and experiences we’ve had throughout our life. We can’t ignore those things.
When is the right time to unpack those bags? I don’t know. What I do know, in my own personal life is that there are times when something is said or something happens and it’s an automatic trigger. The zipper of my bag(s) just opens up without my consent and all the contents spill out. As a result, a conversation is had on why I feel a certain way. In my experience it is usually heated snd results in anger and tears. But it helps me walk through some of the hard moments in my life that created the feeling that I now experience as an adult. It also helps other people understand that some statements and events are deeply triggering.
We don’t like to admit that this happens, but the outbursts we have as adults are often because we go through life carrying so much. We don’t ever put the baggage down, let alone leave it behind...unclaimed. I’d even argue that we just keep adding extra bags and overstuffing the ones we already have.
We have many options on what to do with our baggage but I think it hangs around and rears its ugly head when we are most vulnerable. With the election only a few months away and what seems like much at stake, I want to use a sensitive topic as a prime example of baggage.
Let’s take the abortion issue and discuss what’s truly behind it. There are reasons we feel so strongly about the sanctity of life or a women’s right to choice. It’s not that one person is wrong and the other is right. We have different experiences that form our strong opinions. Let’s think about this for a moment.
Maybe you were the victim of sexual abuse as a child. Maybe you know someone who was raped and forced to carry a child to full term. Maybe you have struggled with infertility. Maybe you lost a dear friend to complications birthing a stillborn. Maybe you grew up not having a choice. Maybe you grew up in a religious family or maybe you didn’t. I can literally go on and on with scenarios that would form the way we feel. By the way, this all baggage we carry! These are all reasons we get so incredibly fired up about Roe v. Wade, the right to life, the right to choice. I’m here to tell you that YOU ARE NOT WRONG about how you feel. It’s just so hard for us to understand what’s in someone else’s bag. Sometimes we have to unpack it all to gain a better understanding of why one might feel the way they do. Maybe we need to recognize within ourselves why it is we feel a certain way. Maybe we don’t even understand what it is that drives our feelings. What’s in your bag? What are you carrying around?
I know I went off on a deep tangent when I only wanted to discuss that baggage is a real thing and we all carry it around. Some of us, I guess, are brave enough to unpack it and leave the empty bag behind. However, I think for most of us, we open up a bag, let a little out, zip it back up and revisit again at a later date. And in between those times, we add more to it.
If you take nothing else away, please leave with this...having baggage is normal. We all have it! It’s ok that we feel differently about things because we aren’t all carrying the same experiences in our bags. When you open up a bag whether intended or not, be prepared for anything and everything. Cue the vulnerability because all emotions are on the table. Accept it for what it is and then close the bag back up and move along.
Life is hard. We don’t need to complicate it any further by undermining our baggage, let alone someone else’s. Those bags often validate our feelings and that’s ok. But let’s help each other unpack them when the time comes. If your bags get too heavy or you have too many to carry, ask for help or even put some down if needed. Or you can do what I do and totally overwhelm yourself by carrying them all at once on three finger tips, hoping for the best. After all, this is the OG when carrying full grocery bags. Or if you want to be a real bad ass or pain in the ass, just leave your bags unclaimed at the carousel. But trust me...they will find you. Happy Unpacking!