Baggage

There’s a special kind of challenge one takes on when dating someone with baggage. My personal rolling suitcase is filled with trust and abandonment issues brought on by a brief failed marriage, an evil ex-boyfriend, and a string of men for whom I was simply not “the one”, but found it easier to slip away silently than tell me goodbye.

Not Just a Fling Guy doesn’t have a suitcase; he’s pulling a horse trailer.

Back on my birthday, when I thought this was a one-night thing, and the following month, when I thought it was just about the sex, I didn’t know much about his life. All I needed was the knowledge that he was still living with a crazy ex and the three kids he helped her raise. It painted a picture that was complicated, and frankly I was relieved he kept me as uninvolved as possible.

But as I stare at that picture, I am finding touches of light in the shadows, shades of gray where before I saw only black and white. I see a man who made some not-so-great choices in his life and is trying to turn it around. I see a man watching a woman he once loved slide ever deeper into a prison of drugs and mania, from which she’ll likely never return. I see a loving father taking responsibility for children who aren’t even his own blood.

I see a good man. An imperfect man, but a good man. It takes a special kind of person to open their heart to someone else’s kids. It takes unlimited patience to deal with my deep-rooted fear of abandonment and loneliness that rears its head in the form of clinging desperation and tearful paranoia. It takes a willingness to love in order to text me late in the night, “I need someone to be on my side.”

We cling to our baggage because it’s all we know, all we’ve learned about others and ourselves along the way. But we don’t need it. And for right now I’m willing to put down my suitcase to be on his side. Not just because someone has to be, but because he just might be the special kind of complicated I’ve been looking for all my life…and when he leaves that trailer behind, we both just might be free.