Baggage v. Knowledge

I was initially going to title this one "Beast of Burden", then I remembered that I hated that Rolling Stones song. And it didn't mean what I thought it meant. Thanks for nothing, books.

I have a friend that I work with professionally but we never talk about work. This isn't to say work isn't important, God knows it is, but we avoid that shit. No, we talk about relationships, our involvement, and how we've played a role in fucking them up. Oh sure, we take time to spread around the blame but usually it circles back around to the real problem: us.

The problem, in both of our cases, in the past. This is often referred to as baggage and as cliche, as it has become to say we all avoid it, we cannot. Yes, we all have a past but I've learned that my life experiences, which for good or bad have shaped me; are officially the problem of the next person I date. I have an ex-wife, a strange childhood, and other fucked up shit that I eventually place upon someone else. It's not really a question of when it happens (Week 11 if you're scoring at home) but when. 

On the other hand, an optimist would say that yes, I have made my mistakes but they've made me the man I am today and I am better for them. I was able to take lemons, squeeze the shit out of them, and bitter lemon juice, with seeds and shit. Anyway, these are my past and apart of my story.

The point: another relationship is about to come to a close, and depending on which paragraph above you subscribe to, the fact remains that yes, I am the problem. This is a perfectly nice, sweet, considerate, attractive individual and really, I don't have one great reason. We all have some foibles that society has deemed undesirable (looking at you, anal warts), but this three-month-long relationship is about to end because more than anything, being with her reminds of my being married to my ex-wife. I wish I could run her down, make disparaging remarks about the cleanliness of her vag...but no, being with her brings back bad memories from the past.

Shallow? Maybe.
Immature? Likely.
Oblivious? Not the first time.

So I'll move on, with questionable reasoning, onto whatever is next.

Funny...as I wrote this, there is a Todd Snider lyric that continued to bounce around in my head:
"But I feel like I oughta be praying or something; And I have no idea what to say"