Luggage

It isn't often that I ride the Blue Line with my whole family. Why don't we do this more? We live right by a stop, and Chicago offers so much—especially the museums we used to visit all the time when the kids were little.

As we sat on the train, I found myself staring at Jasper's luggage.

I remember buying that luggage—a whole matching set. The first time I'd ever bought something that matched and was brand new. Being the youngest, I'm a hand-me-down type of human, so buying a matching set felt like a surprisingly big deal.

I started wondering if he'd take that luggage with him to college.

And then the flashback began.

Whenever I think about my life before kids—my late teens and all of my twenties—I play this strange little memory game. I challenge myself to remember ordinary things. How did I do my laundry? Did I grocery shop? What did I eat?

I play this game because I wasn't very good at taking care of myself back then, and for some reason, remembering those tiny details comforts me. It's as if recalling myself buying fresh food or folding laundry is proof that I wasn't a complete piece of shit to myself.

Then another question surfaced.

Did I even have luggage when I went to college?

I remember watching my sisters pack theirs. Everything was neat. Organized. Matching. I would daydream while they packed, imagining what my own launch into adulthood would look like someday.

I think back hard enough and eventually remember.

I had a couple of garbage bags.

A sleeping bag because we weren't sure whether my school's apartment would even have a bed.

And two worn duffel bags.

Not exactly the same send-off as my sisters.

At the time, I don't think I consciously cared.

But somewhere inside, it hurt.

I remember both of my parents driving my sisters to college.

I got just my dad, squeezing my move-in between stops on a business trip.

Oh, how special I felt.

It felt like the subpar send-off for the subpar school choice.

I could feel it in my heart, my gut, my whole body—how disappointed my parents were that I had chosen a two-year art school. I imagined I could feel it from my sisters, too, and even from the community that had spent years cheering me on during volleyball and basketball games.

I had opportunities to play college sports.

Instead, I chose art.

Much to everyone's disappointment—or at least that's how it felt.

The funny thing is, I also felt like a fraud. I always wanted to take more art classes in high school, but they never fit around everything else piled onto my plate. Even as I chose art, part of me questioned whether I belonged there.

It's so strange—and yet it makes perfect sense—that a single piece of luggage can bring me back to a moment that holds the themes of feeling less than, not good enough, or like a disappointment.

Trauma is sneaky like that.

It's less about remembering events than it is about remembering themes.

The past waits quietly until something ordinary gives it permission to speak.

This time, it was luggage.

And the theme was disappointment.

This feels like complex trauma to me.

I see it in clients all the time.

I feel it in my own bones when I let myself stay with the memory long enough.

If I zoom way out, another story appears.

I was an eighteen-year-old whose father drove her to college and helped pay for a school he didn't agree with. I had transportation. I had financial support. I had more privilege than many people ever receive.

So why does this still feel like a trauma memory?

That's usually when the shame shows up.

Who am I to call this trauma?

But trauma isn't always about the event.

It's about the meaning our nervous system makes of the event.

The garbage bags weren't traumatic because they were garbage bags.

They represented something.

After watching my sisters—who, in my mind, "did it right"—leave with matching luggage and excitement surrounding them, I left with garbage bags.

To my eighteen-year-old nervous system, the message wasn't "You have bags."

The message was:

You are the garbage bag.

I felt like garbage back then.

I had a garbage boyfriend who quietly did a number on my mental health, and nobody in my family really knew because they were busy surviving their own lives while rolling their eyes at what probably looked like stereotypical adolescent drama.

But there was nothing stereotypical about it.

They didn't know.

I don't blame them then.

I don't blame them now.

I understand enough about trauma to know that all of those experiences braided themselves together into one familiar feeling:

Less than.

Not enough.

A disappointment.

It's frustrating, though.

A family train ride.

A happy thought about my oldest someday taking that luggage to college.

And somehow my mind ended up here.

But maybe that's the work.

Not preventing the memory from surfacing.

Meeting it differently when it does.

Looking at that eighteen-year-old with more compassion than she was ever able to offer herself.

Remembering that the nervous system stores themes, not just stories.

And then gently returning to the present.

To this train.

To my family.

To the son who may one day take that luggage to college.

To the woman who is no longer the girl carrying garbage bags.

I deserve more compassion than I gave myself back then.

Maybe that's the real ending to this story.

Not that the memory disappeared.

But that I finally came back.

I am here.

It took a while.

But I arrived.