All You Need to Hold Onto...Is You

"Bag Lady" by Erykah Badu

...so pack light / pack light / pack light / ooh ooh...

This song is the realest song she ever wrote.  I remember hearing it for the first time when I was about 13 years old.  By then, I had enough bags to relate to the song, love the song, cry with the song, sleep to the song.


I wasn't old enough to hear her invoking me to drop my bags...all you must hold onto is you...but I did know she was talking to me.


To do this day, I have yet to learn to drop the bags.  Not to be so cliché, but I didn't necessarily think of the bags as something separate from me.  I hold onto them thinking I am holding on to myself.


With age, I have realized that they are indeed just bags.  It is baggage, dead weight, old clothes, useless gadgets, intrusive memories, broken things, broken promises, and dreams deferred, sagging like a heavy load.


I am not my damage, so to speak.  I am not my pain.  I shall not be a victim of my own victimhood.  Pack light.


...girl I know sometimes it's hard / and we can't let go / when someone hurts you oh so bad inside / you can't deny it / you can't stop cryin' / if you start breathin' / you won't believe it / you'll feel so much better / so much better baby...

Who can argue with that?


And love can make it better.  True love can make it so much better.


I was going to write about how all men are the same.  I believe this.  At some core, existential, unseen place, men are the same.  The react the same to their egos being slighted, because that is only thing that can really be slighted and it is THE thing for which a man will make you pay.


I have seen and heard men do that to me over and over again like a broken record and I still don't know the words (I can't recognize it when I see it).


And I wanted to write about how something is wrong with me.  And something is, but it ain't permanent, and it ain't irreversible, and it ain't debilitating.  I can fight it and change it so that as soon as that record comes on, party's over.


I am packing light.  This entails me expelling other people's baggage too.  People don't talk about that but I have never believe that all your baggage is your own.  That would imply that every man is an island and we create, maintain, and nourish our own pathologies.


Sh-------------------------------------t.

People provide each other with baggage at times.  People pack my bags with their insecurities, their inadequacies, their problems, and tell me that they are mine.


Well I don't want them.


For a little bit, I will have to be selfish and do things for me so that I can be better for you, all of you, everyone I love.


You will notice some distance from me.  You will notice that I don't engage you like I used to.  You will all notice that sometimes, I just don't give a damn and I'm not going to argue, explain myself, excuse myself, restrain myself, or blame myself.


I want to responsible and accountable for creating a space for sanity, peace, and happiness in my life.  I want to be a powerful African woman.  I want to be proud of myself.  I want the cleanliness I deserve to satisfy myself and not to show you.  Hell, if you look for dirt, you will find it.



I am not responsible for any of what ails y'all.


What you eat don't make me sh-t, right?