Baggage Lady

My friend told me last night during one of our you-can-do-it-girl emotional support calls that she is choosing not to date because she is working on her baggage. It was the first comment I had heard in a long time that had rendered me speechless.
First off, I had no idea that people were still working on baggage out here. From my passenger seat, it looks like everyone is just running wild while walking calmly, eager to put their emotional ish on the next love or like or one night stand or even co-worker. I thought that we had all realized that we all have our crosses to bear- bad credit, mental health issues, addictions, poor attitudes- and that the next person that we link up with will have theirs as well. I thought that we had all spent our money on concert tickets and expensive camera gear that we don't know how to use so we can't afford therapy. So, we all decided to be honest and let our partners know that we had issues. They would tell us their issues. Then we would decide if it was worth it. And no, no one told me this. I just assumed all this as I strolled through my Instagram feed and realized that all of my newly engaged friends are some of the most screwed up people in my life.
I am the proof that working on baggage doesn't work! About a million years ago after breaking off a hard, three-day renothingship with a loser, I dedicated A YEAR to getting rid of my emotional baggage. I considered it the year that I was dedicating to Aphrodite to get myself in emotional order.
"You are 27-years-old, you don't have a year to give away!" Jamaica had screamed in my ear when I told her about my plans to change my life, purging myself of the baggage I had inhaled from that loser. Looking back, she was absolutely correct. That was the last year that I was able to look thick and not huge in jeans. That could have been the year that I got some really good, womanhood creating baggage...or I could have fallen in love. Who knows? The point is, one year, two years, ten years- there is no amount of time that is suitable for working on baggage. Because if you take the time you need, which is A LIFETIME, you will be the most emotionally healthy, lonely, 100-year-old on Plenty of Fish, and who really wants that?
I'm an over-eater that is afraid of doctors. I have a positively negative attitude and I live for gossip like a man going to the electric chair lives for his last meal. BAGGAGE. And when life was happening to me, when I was negotiating payment arrangements and bartering unused fragrances with neighbors to bum their WiFi, my baggage was right their, growing leaps and bounds and keeping me warm in my crap hole apartment as I experimented with holding a lighter to my face as an alternative to turning my heat on. You say baggage, but that sounds like a good ride or die friend to me.
"I think it is great that you are working on you!" I told my friend. She was excited I was on board. I decided not to tell her how ridiculous she was being. Receiving a negative response after being honest and open is an experience that can create baggage.