I Have No Idea What to Do with My Leftover Love for You
Emotional baggage is such a terrible phrase. It sounds like the soul is a room filled with black trash bags stuffed with threadbare clothes from several years ago or misconfigured toys. The clutter of the mind, emotional baggage can be overwhelming, especially when it comes from a broken heart. So I prefer to call it something else, something slightly more welcomed – leftover love. I still have plenty of love leftover from the last relationship, and I am ready to give it to someone else.
Everyone has baggage
Hurtful memories. Sharp words. Feeling like I am not worth love or that mine is defective. All of these things have resulted from failed relationships. Most of the time, misunderstandings cause us to fall away from other people. Everyone has baggage, and we all handle it differently. When we see it as a reason to be unreasonable and irrational, we are channeling it the wrong way.
For example, as a kid, I was often picked on. Despite this, I wanted to be respected rather than called names. I wanted friends instead of people who used my eagerness to please for their own gains. This, of course, stemmed from the environment I lived in at home. The emotional baggage would be from me seeking love and acceptance then getting mistreated because of it. So the average person would stop questing for love out of fear of getting stepped on.
I learned how to channel that emotional baggage
While that was me most of the time, I learned how to channel that emotional baggage – that mistrust of people and unwillingness to love – and reconstructed it into something else. I renamed it “leftover love.”
Simply put, I love too much. I pour my passion into my work, my life, and my relationships. All of them, not just the romantic ones. When my heart gets broken, instead of spiraling down into a dismal place and comforting myself with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s, I do something else. I pick myself up, remove the dish of leftover love from the refrigerator, reheat and serve it up.
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I have plenty of leftover love to offer
Just because I was broken once before, it does not mean that I cannot love again. Think of love as spaghetti. Most people will agree with me when I say that spaghetti that has soaked overnight in the sauce tastes better than when it is made fresh. Love is like that, too. First love rarely lasts. It has not had time to absorb the various flavors of life. Leftover love has a richness that cannot be compared to something as insipid as first love.
So to every partner I may have in the future, just because I have had some horrid relationships in the past, do not expect me to wallow in those negative experiences forever. Do not expect me to return to that dark place. While I may give up on love for a week or a month, love will not give up on me. Even when it seems like all the love has been drained from my soul, filaments remain.
Every time I meet someone who sees me for who I am, that leftover love is found. It might take me a while to warm back up, because believe me when I say that it will be worth the wait.
