This morning, after going to bed at 1:00 and sleeping for three short hours, I woke up at 4:00 and–I’m not kidding–got ready for the day, since Mom was scheduled to have surgery at the ungodly hour of 7:00 (AM). “Be there at 5:00,” they said, so we were–me, Dad, and of course Mom–who’s wanted this surgery since January when she had her double mastectomy and the doctor left “excess skin.” Obviously, it’s personal (and I’m my mom’s son), but she said things just haven’t “looked right,” and the doctor today was going to fix them. And I get that, the need to go back and clean things up, the need to have everything just so. But must we do these things so frickin’ early in the morning?!

The only consolation was the fact that Mom’s doctor was smoking hot.

But I digress.

The surgery itself went well, and everything–registration, prep, surgery, recovery–only took four hours, during which time Dad and I grabbed breakfast (and saw a full rainbow), read, and harassed the other people in the waiting room. Well, Dad did the harrassing. “Have you read that magazine?” he asked a complete stranger. “MY SON HERE wrote an article in it!” Not surprised by my father’s behavior, I looked up from my book to the lady before me and tried to manage a smile.

“Hi,” I said.

After leaving the hospital, Mom, Dad, and I ran a couple errands and came back home, and I went straight back to bed until one this afternoon. Then I went to a used book store, since–I thought–that would be a good thing to do on a Friday. However, I discovered upon arriving at the bookstore that today is, in fact, NOT Friday, but rather Tuesday (and the bookstore ISN’T open on Tuesdays). I swear, I felt so turned around and confused. How could I not know what day it was? That being said, I haven’t had a regular schedule in a while, we just came off a holiday weekend, and I WAS up EXTREMELY early this morning.

Already frustrated, I decided to use the rest of the afternoon doing everything I didn’t want to do but needed to do, things like requesting some of my personal medical records (from the car accident I was in last year) and paying my property taxes and other bills. Just get it all over with, I told myself.

Recently I wrote about the parking ticket I got when I visited San Francisco and the protest I filed in reply. Well, I got the city’s response today, and they didn’t buy it. “Screw you,” they said in not so many words. Well, to be fair, they said, “You should have known to turn your wheels when parking on a hill. That’s a thing. So pay up.” Anyway, again–in an effort to get something unpleasant over with–I paid the ticket today too. (The City of San Francisco conveniently takes payments online.) But still–I’ve been thinking a lot about it, since it really is drag. Part of life, maybe, but a drag nonetheless. $69 down the drain because I made an honest mistake.

But here’s the thing–a lot of shit things happen in life. Maybe you’re happy when you’re a small child. You’re happy for no reason, really. And then your mom gets sick, your house burns down, the neighbor kid’s an asshole, your dad goes to prison, you’re in a car wreck (or two), and–I don’t know–you fall in love with Satan. (I’m just pulling stuff out of the air here.) But you know, this is life. We accumulate baggage. And yeah, sometimes it’s big baggage; sometimes it’s little baggage, little things that get under your skin that you inevitably gripe about–things like living with your parents, not feeling well or not having a job, or the fact that you got a parking ticket.

Again, these are just random examples.

In my experience, somewhere along the way–because of the shit we go through and the shit we hang onto–we lose a certain amount of our childlike happiness. In exchange, we get our irritations, complaints, and things to bitch about. We get to “be right.” This is the ATTRACTIVE thing about baggage; it’s part of why we clutch tightly to it. We get to think or say, “Can you believe what those assholes did to me?” and “Fuck them AND the horse they rode in on.”

Like anyone rides in on horses anymore. But here’s my point–as much as baggage is kind of fun–as much as being upset about a parking ticket gives me something to blog and bitch about–baggage is baggage is baggage. In other words, baggage–big or small–is by definition heavy and weighs a person down. This is why, having protested and lost, I immediately paid the parking ticket this afternoon. I’m TIRED of CARRYING that issue or problem around. I was just fine before it showed up and DON’T want to carry that problem into tomorrow. Honestly, I don’t want to carry ANY of my past into my future.

The past, after all, is simply too heavy to carry around. This is why Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead.” He wasn’t being unfeeling; he was being practical. It’s over. Let it go, Nancy. Forgive. (And if that doesn’t work, forgive again). Forgiveness–I don’t use that word very often on this blog, but I’ve used ever other word or combination of words that mean the same thing–letting go, patience, self-acceptance. Forgiveness is what I mean when I say that I get the need to go back and clean things up, to get everything just so. That’s what I’m doing here on this blog, after all–cleaning things up and forgiving the past, finding SOME WAY to look at all the shit and baggage in my life and NOT hang onto it, finding SOME WAY to un-clutch and start tomorrow lighter and more childlike, more free.