Baggage

I carry my life in a suitcase. My parents gave it to me when I was still too young to understand what it was. They taught me to carry it and they put some of their weight in it, though I’m not sure if they meant to.

It’s a lovely suitcase made out of cured brown leather, with bronze locks and a mahogany handle. It is not a very big sort of suitcase, but it is just large enough for me to fit my life in.

I have a lot of books in the suitcase. Most of them I have never read, but I like the idea of reading them. I carry them with me, because one day I might become a reader and then I will be prepared. They are big, these books, with a lot of tiny words that don’t say much and with colourful covers that aren’t reminiscent of what’s on the pages. 

In my suitcase I have clothes. I have big clothes and small clothes, white clothes and black clothes. I have brown and grey clothes that are well worn and comfortable. I have colourful and brave clothes that are as fine and clean as the day they were bought.

I have many souvenirs in my suitcase; souvenirs from places I have never been. Magnets, cups, posters. I can’t pronounce most of the names but I keep them anyway. Maybe one day I will go there and learn how to say the name. I also have a lot of things in my suitcase. I have pencils and chairs and plants and pictures and lamps and boxes. I have so many boxes because then I can put my things in them so they look nice inside my suitcase. I often forget which things I have. I had a cat in my suitcase once, but it disappeared.

I put all of my feelings in my suitcase. I put my smiles and laughs and my screams and tears. I put all my shame in my suitcase, but it slides around and because its so heavy it sometimes makes me trip if it slides completely to one side. I tried to put my anger into my suitcase as well, but it wouldn’t fit. A therapist helped show me how to cut my anger into thirty small pieces that I could stuff in various boxes inside my suitcase. I used to have a lot of love in there, but love is a perishable and I threw it out when it began to grow mouldy. 

I put my job in my suitcase. It is a very small job so there was no problem getting it to fit. It is a nice job, I think, and it looks good when it sits next to my grey and brown clothes. It is a job that requires I meet at nine everyday and leave at five which is why it’s so good that I carry it around with me. I’m never late, though sometimes I am a bit early. It’s hard not to be when it’s right there next to everything else in my life.

I wanted to put my hobbies in the suitcase. But they were such strange shapes and colours that they looked weird next to my job and my brown and grey clothes. I decided to leave them outside the suitcase, and very soon I forgot about them, the same way I forgot about my hopes. I put my hopes inside my suitcase a long time ago but I’ve not been able to find them, though recently I’ve been looking hard for them. I think I might have accidentally placed my job on top of them and squashed them. 

Or maybe they got lost in the memories. I carry all my memories in my suitcase, you see. I put all my good ones and happy ones and interesting ones in a cute little china teapot I found. All my bad memories where I am scared or mad or frightened I have put into a large cargo container. Soon I’m going to have to find another cargo container because the old one is nearly full.

Next to the container is a bin labelled “toxic-waste.” It is where I put all the things I wish to forget. It is not a very big bin but that is because it has a hidden compartment underneath that opens up to a very wide space. I once thought of putting the bin outside my suitcase, but thought better of it.

There was a time where I took things out of the suitcase. It made the suitcase so light I almost forgot about it. Then I grew afraid and filled it with rocks lest it grow so light it would fly away entirely.

I tried to put my friends in my suitcase. I showed it to them and they complimented me on its leather and fine mahogany handle. But they couldn’t get in. I don’t know why. They said there wasn’t space enough for them. They said that maybe if I cleaned it and removed all the old things there would be room. 

There was once a very important person who said the same thing to me. I don’t remember their name, because I put all memories of them in the toxic-waste bin, and while I always carry it with me I never look in it.

It has become very heavy as of late, but I still carry it with me wherever I go, and I never take anything out of it anymore. My fingers and arms grow stronger, but it seems to me that the suitcase grows heavier at a more rapid rate. I don’t know what will happen if I one day drop it and can’t pick it up. I imagine I would stay next to it, perhaps sit on it and hope somebody would come along to help me carry it home.

I’ve begun sleeping with it under my pillow lest I misplace it one evening and can’t find it in the morning. I dream of it sometimes, and dream with it most times. There I am in my dreams, carrying my life with me in my suitcase. Then I wake up and I carry it with me.

I fear I’ll forget it one time when I step off the bus. Or perhaps I’ll accidentally leave it the station and watch it out of the window as the train speeds past. “There goes my life,” I’ll say, and that will be that.

My entire life is in my suitcase. Everything I have ever heard, everything I have ever had. Everything that is important to me. Sometimes I wonder how, when everything important to me is in my suitcase, I can be stood outside it. On those occasions I put the suitcase down on the ground and imagine jumping into it. I never do it, because if I did, who would carry it?

People tell me that I will grow old and develop arthritis in my hands from carrying the suitcase around for so long. I worried about it for a while, and now I carry that worry with me in my suitcase.

When I was younger they told me that I would die one day, and someone would come and carry the case for me, off to a foreign land somewhere else. I don’t know if I will be able to let it go then. It feels so strange not to have its mahogany handle in my hand. In any case it will be long before that happens and until then I have a lot more things to fill my suitcase with.