We all lug around with us, at the least, a carry-on-sized parcel of baggage. It's the way in which we choose to carry the baggage which serves as a warning signal to those forlorn-looking security checkpoint commandos who mandate our ability to move on to catch the next flight, or next hope at happiness, whichever the case may be.

I am thankful to whomever came up with the idea for those locking devices that one may secure to luggage to keep it from flying open at the most inappropriate of times. The security it provides in keeping the contents from spilling out onto the floor lends a sense of comfort, especially at those times when we happen to be toting about those "items" we keep tucked away in the side zipper compartment where we know they won't be viewed.

These tucked-away items in our load of baggage may be better termed 'scabs' when referring to relationships. Whether we walk away from a relationship out of our own want, or we are pushed out against our will, we take with us some sort of battle wound. Most of the remnants of our past flings, loves, and mild trysts around the merry-go-round of love, simply wither away. These are the scabs that eventually heal without even a hint of a scar to serve as a remainder of our past adventures in romanceville. Then there are the others - those scabs which we probably forget about over the course of time, but which we are at a moment's notice -- typically at the worst of moments -- forced to deal with when the tender skin is broken by having lifted the bandages too soon.

I always believed that new loves were perhaps reactions to that which we once left behind. The new antidotes to kill off the old toxic poisons left by past lovers. Even when you're in the midst of the most happy of new couplings, the toxic ooze which spills from one of those forgotten wounds tends to burn with the sort of nagging presence that comes from a twice-punctured injury. Years of experience have at least forced me to recognize that there is no antidote to be found in the arms of another person that aids in our getting over the failures of our past.

And so like a bolt of lightning that strikes mercilessly from a cloudless sky, it happens! You know those moments when the red Toyota truck that passes you on the freeway looks a little too familiar, or you catch a passing glimpse of a "once known" just before they turn that corner? These are the flashes in time that act as the second puncture device and force us to relive moments we once thought buried in the relationship graveyard. Sometimes they come in the form of a passing car, or a near miss sighting, but the most acute variety have to come in the form of a letter. Oh, did I mention that this particular letter also requires an RSVP response, and the ability to hold thy tongue when the priest, minister, justice of the peace, whatever, asks whether anyone knows of any reason that these two shouldn't be joined in holy matrimony?

Two years ago I went to see Dido in San Francisco with a little known singer named Jude as the opening act. When he sang a song titled "I Do" with bitter sweet lyrics that started,

I got a letter today
An invitation
And the writing looked like you
Hello how are you and by the way
Please RSVP I do...

I was quite thankful to have never had to live through that experience. What I didn't realize at the time is that it's bound to happen to all of us at some point. Even if we saw no hopes in a future with said bride or groom, it still seems to send a sort of shock to the system when an ex love intends to betroth another.

The moments in my life where I am certain that I've been haunted by a ghost, were those when I was forced, through some sort of run-in, to confront my past. In a somewhat morbid analogy, the termination of a relationship does equate to the death of a loved one. We box up the past trinkets of love and then slide them under a bed, house them in a closet, or hurl them out a car window, so that we can move on with our lives. In most cases, the breakup, just as with death, signifies that we'll never see the person again. They simply disappear from our lives just as quickly as they made their entrance.

So why is it that a simple run-in with an ex, especially when it comes paired with proof that they were in fact able to move on after the breakup, leave us feeling literally as if we've been spooked by an apparition? Perhaps it leaves us questioning just what that other person possesses that we didn't or asking just why happiness was found in the arms of another when it wasn't found in our own. And in the most vain circumstance, it leaves us asking how they could have left us for someone who in no way could be deemed good looking or intelligent.

Even after one has bid farewell to love, ex's tend to take on two different sorts of rankings. There are those who fall into what I'll deem the unemployed, drunken, failed rock star category, and those whom we still can't find fault with, or may still love, but for some reason or other, just couldn't make it work with. The former lot we can trash like yesterday's newspaper without second thought as to what dump they'll make their next home. The variety that fall into the latter category however, always remain in the back of our minds, perhaps with the knowledge that what circumstance may have made unworkable at one time, may change with the passing of the seasons.

So this is the hole in our "move-on" mindset -- the gap in the portal by which the ghost from our past slips through. The fact that we hadn't fully placed this person in our "never to be sought again" category never allowed that scab to fully heal.

So as I check "I will" (attend) to the RSVP card, I do so knowing that in a way it signifies that finality that should have happened long ago - the final healing of that scabbed-over wound that was just waiting for reason to remedy itself.

And just as Jude vocalized two years ago, I'll seal the envelope all the while singing:

I wish you health and wealth and a white house on a hill
and I hope you raise a family
Little boy and a little girl, a little more joy in this little old world
Well, that'd be enough for me