Shawty, Lemme Help You with Those Bags...

Let's all say that evil word together: baggage. Now breathe. Realize it exists. You have either dealt with someone who has it or were the person who has it. Breathe again and slowly. For all those who are the ones carrying bags, I'm about to drop a BOMB on you.

You are your own baggage and it very well may be why you are single. Look at it from the perspective of grocery shopping. When you walk in the doors of the store and you see all the pretty, fresh and luscious produce..and if you want an apple, you'll head to the apple bin. When you get there, sure you may notice that banged up apple, you may even pick it up to see if it has just one rough spot or several, but chances are, it's not going in your basket. It might, if the store was offering a huge discount on apples with bruises that day, but more than likely it isn't and that bruised apple is never going to leave the store. Not when there are other bruise-free apples to choose from. If you view each hurt, drama, pain, lie or point of emotional anguish as a bruise, and yourself as an apple, then it's no wonder why you aren't getting selected. And let's be honest, you want to be selected. You wouldn't be reading this if you didn't.

So before you chalk it up and say that you can't accept that you are your own baggage, consider it from a broader perspective. When you have a suspicion that you are being taken advantage of, before you investigate it, you have a gut feeling that you follow, right? Something inspires you to think that maybe something is off in the bigger picture. That thing can come from a past instance where you or someone else was taken advantage of, or something not adding up. Imagine if you didn't have those initial indications that something was not right. Imagine if you went into situations with no basis for comparison. In terms of relationships, in those instances, you'd be someone who was simply unbiased. Think of baggage in the same manner...if you didn't carry it or let it affect you, you wouldn't have anything to indicate that initial feeling. However, while some could argue that doing so would leave you open to being hurt, but I argue that you should not forget those experiences happened, just don't automatically go to them in moments of conflict. Allow the experience into the equation, but not the turmoil that it brought. You can't change the past, but you can change how you let it impact your future.

Baggage is created by you and it can just as easily be eliminated by you. That's right, I said it. You can get rid of those bags just as easily as you picked them up and packed them in the first place. It's on you to carry them forward, or leave them in the carousel for Lost and Found.