Caring Capacity

We all carry baggage. For some of us it can be heavy emotional baggage, like wounded hearts and scarred souls, for others it’s more physical in nature, like those who can’t let go of body weight or possessions, and then there are the ones with what I call familial baggage; like children and aging parents. But if you are really lucky the only bag you carry is your gym bag or your lunch bag.

Emotional baggage can result from a bad breakup, stress in your life, or a traumatic event. For many people the presence of emotional baggage trumps everything, especially new relationships. Emotional baggage has followed me from time to time stymieing my urge to focus on a relationship. Many years ago when I was a couple months into dating a new guy my family lost their house to a fire. Oddly enough the house fire left me cold, and even though I had been dating this guy for a while, I couldn’t continue with the relationship. I simply lost all feeling I had for him. It was strange to suddenly feel absolutely nothing. Ironically, this house fire, while creating emotional baggage also helped me get rid of the physical baggage in my life.

Physical baggage comes in many forms; excess body weight, overstocked cupboards filled with food items near or past expiry dates, closets filled to the brim with ‘just in case’ clothing items that haven’t been worn for over a year, and even cluttered and paper covered desks because you are just too busy to file things in drawers or the round filing bin on the floor. I think shedding physical baggage is probably the easiest for me. I feel lighter when I am able to organize my living spaces and make them esthetically pleasing places in which to be.

Finally there’s familial baggage. I loathe calling my children “baggage, but they come with me no matter what I do or where I go, and when describing who I am my children are inevitably a part of that description. That said they are the best kind of accoutrements and I love surrounding myself with their presence. It wasn’t until I began dating again after my marriage ended that I noticed a big difference in my “post children” dating style. The freedom to go out spontaneously had been replaced by compromise. I quickly learned the type of person I wanted to date by his acceptance of my scheduling conflicts. There were some people who, once they found out I had children, were gone in a flash, sometimes even before our first date. What worked best was when I met someone who was both cognizant of my situation and who came with similar baggage of his own. I think that I was drawn to the same. I have dependent children and he has an aging parent, both of which require time and patience and an unending ability to empathize. There are many days we share our responsibilities (these are also the times when we must share our affections with others) and there are other days where we each shoulder the entire load ourselves. Our caring capacity does not diminish with this added responsibility. Conversely it continues to grow. It’s what makes us human.