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Girl, you betta' get rid of them bags   

The other night I was up late listening to the Quiet Storm.  Erykah Badu was crooning "Bag Lady" to all the listeners and I devoured each and every word.

 "One day all them bags gone get in your way," she sang. 

It was like a light went off in my head and I was thinking to myself, “She is going through the exact same thing I am.”  It sparked me to investigate my own soul for excess baggage that needed to be discarded.

  On my journey to freedom, I stopped first inside my heavy heart.  I almost had to kick my way through the doors of my own heart because it was so overrun with old hurts and resentments.  I was surprised at the amount of bags there that I’d actually forgotten about.  I eliminated those first.  Immediately I noticed the difference.  The tension in my head and the tightness in my chest began to loosen. 

 Okay, let’s see what else we can get rid of.  Then I saw it.  Tucked away neatly in one corner of my heart was my most recent relationship.  What was it doing here?  My boo loved me, and I loved my boo, right?  Romeo and Juliet.  I reached for it.  It was heavy and I couldn’t seem to move it.  No matter what I tried, I couldn’t lift it, nor could I shake it.  Then it dawned on me like a ray of realization.  Oh, I know!!

 The reason my heart held on so tightly to this particular bag must be because there was so much love in there.  I opened the bag to find all of my love there in every form.  I was proud of me, at first,  because I never knew how much real love I had inside.  But as I dug deeper into this bag, I noticed there was no love from my Romeo.  This confused me to no end.  Indeed the bag was full.  But, alas, full only of the love I had to give.

 Really seeing this relationship for the first time was like a slap in the face.  It was just as disturbing as seeing the man you love out on a date with another woman.  I shook my head in disgust as reality rushed in to greet me.   How could I even have love for myself, if all of my love was here, packed away in this bag?  This was disturbing, hadn’t he told me he loved me? 

I thought immediately of all the times we had "made love."  Beautiful love.   Hadn't that been real?  I checked the bag a third and a fourth time just to be sure, only to come up with the same results.  Nothing.  I had given him all of love, but there was not even a trace of his own.  And I was so preoccupied giving my love away, I never even noticed I wasn’t receiving any of his in return.

 I leaned against the walls of my heart and allowed my love to escape from it’s solitude.  It surrounded me and gave me the strength I needed to let go of something that never even existed. 

Now I'll be damned!!! Ain't that a blip?  All this time I've been carrying this bag, I didn't realize it was keeping me from the full experience of love.  It was standing between me and true happiness and fulfillment. Getting in the way of what I should have been feeling.  I discarded that old bag and made room for the one person I knew without a shadow of a doubt was worthy of my love.

 Myself.

 Then, I wondered what happened to all the love he said he had for me?  I figure since one holds only truth in there heart, his love couldn't dwell there because it wasn't real.  Evidently it passed through my body unable to stay and was expelled like all of the other toxins and waste. Good riddance to bad rubbish.           

                                                                          by Bridgette Hogan
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Bridgette is a contributing writer of Blacksonville.com