Y

"Up till now I used to pass my time

Drinking beer so slowly, sometimes wine

No god, air, water, or sunshine

And honesty was my only excuse

I took your love and I used it"

["Honesty is no Excuse", Thin Lizzy]

I live my life with very few regrets.  I try to own everything I've done, good and bad.  "It was the best decision at that time".  It doesn't excuse everything I've done, and it's not license to repeat mistakes either.  But I've learned to forgive myself for my failures and I think it important we all do.

I also think it's important we learn from our mistakes, and leverage them to make ourselves better people.  So this past year of #MeToo and #ItWasMe has caused me to do a lot of soul-searching in regards to past relationships and my treatment of women, and to really think about the kind of man I am and the kind of man I have been and most importantly the kind of man I want to become.

I'm a part of that very large group of men who have long-deluded themselves with the self-assurance that "I'm one of the good guys", who lament "nice guys finish last", and who spent their youth and early twenties asking "why do chicks dig assholes?"

If, in your youth, you befriended girls for long periods while working up the courage to ask them out, only to pull back on that friendship later when you were rejected and it became obvious that the romantic entanglements weren't forth-coming for your long-term investment, the question you need to ask yourself is whether you (like me) were just playing an emotionally-manipulative long-con from the very start.  Because that certainly qualifies you as an asshole too.  As for why they "dug assholes" instead of you, maybe it's because those other guys were actually more honest about their interests.  And you, well, you never actually asked, did you?  At least not until you overcame your cowardice and had raised the stakes to a point where they didn't want to take the risk.  Did you then leave them heart-broken when you revoked what they believed a genuine friendship?  That's just dirty.

I get that now.  I didn't get that then.  I no longer look at Young Pat with the compassion I once did.  Evil doesn't run around toasting "To Evil!"  Evil convinces itself that what it's doing is good, and fair, and justified.  Young Pat was very good at deluding himself that way.  And for that I'm sorry, but for what it's worth I assure you he got all the heartache he deserved.

"Good guy?" is also not a binary equation.  It's not either or.  There are varying degrees of good-guy-ness, I think, and on that sliding scale, I (still!) like to assure (delude?) myself I'm on the better end.  But I know I wasn't always here; it's something I've striven toward as I've gotten older.  I know there's still room for improvement, and that's why I spend time in reflection, pondering mistakes I've made and how not to make them again.

I want to be a better man person.

I'm not going to dive into a list of apologies owed for past transgressions (though there is one in my head, as you might guess), but there is one thing, one odd little thing, that has been bugging at me, and it is the reason I decided to write today.

I've always tried to learn from every relationship I had, even the bad ones.  In fact, in the case of the worst ones it's the sort of "silver-lining" and for even the most painful of them I can reluctantly list things I came away with.

But there was one brief one, from a long, long time ago, that I could never point to and say "and that's where I learned this".  It was short-lived and doesn't make the list of past relationships I ever talk about.  Even most of my closest friends wouldn't be able to name her.  Most never met her.  She is someone I lost contact with shortly after the day I dumped her.

But of late, she's become a splinter in my mind.

It's not exactly something I did wrong.  It's just... something I did... stupid?  It was a long time ago, and I'm not sure "regret" is even the right word.  It wasn't something I did, but something I didn't do, and it was something I didn't do mostly because it was something I couldn't do. 

I was a young man.  I didn't have the tools to even begin to understand what I was really dealing with.  I don't recall my reaction when she told me what she told me.  I assume I had nothing to say. 

Ours was a strange relationship.  I'd not had one like that before, and I've not had one like it since.  It was intensely physical yet emotionally distant.  It was frequently impolite or even downright rude (on her part more than mine).  We communicated with a whole different vocabulary than to which I was accustomed.  We succeeded at having great sex but failed miserably at most attempts at romance.  It was truly strange, surreal even.

She was the victim of an incredibly powerful trauma in her childhood, the gravity of which would be obvious to me today, but which I did not properly appreciate back then.  I'm not about to detail it.  It's not my story to tell.  But I will characterize it as "horrific" and I don't think that's overstating it.

And while lacking the tools to help her properly unpack the kind of emotional baggage she was carrying might be excusable, lacking the compassion I could have and should have shown her given what I knew was far less so.  Characterizing her as "batshit crazy" afterward when explaining the reason for our breakup was pretty goddamn far from fair too.

I remember the day I dumped her.  I remember some of the things I said.  I was so full of righteous indignation.  Because I was selfish.  Because I was an asshole.  It was all about me.  It was about my needs.  But I felt so justified.  It was my day.  It was my special day.  So I was justified, because it was my day.

And maybe on that day, about that one thing, maybe I was.  Maybe I was entitled to be upset.  Maybe it was perfectly reasonable.  But the truth is that looking back I think I never really did right by her, ever.  Not on any of the other days in the weeks or months that preceded that one.  I never tried to really take the time to contemplate what her needs were or how I might best meet them.  I took what I wanted without ever really stopping to ask what she wanted or needed in return.  I told myself we had an understanding and that as long as we were both honest with each other - which we were - that whatever happened happened and whatever happened was fair.

But life hadn't been fair to her.  And her ability to express, honestly, what it was she probably needed most, that was compromised.  What she wanted most, I suspect, was simply compassion.  What she needed but couldn't vocalize was to just be treated with some dignity and respect and assured that things would work out.

But I wasn't listening.

Now, decades later, I finally feel like maybe I have, at long last, learned something from that relationship.

I've learned that sometimes the price of being raised with the ideals of toxic masculinity isn't always obvious.  Sometimes it's more subtle.  Sometimes it means missing out on a chance to simply be nice and listen to someone who so desperately needs it, to help because you're in a position to do so.  Sometimes an opportunity to be a decent goddamn human being flies by unnoticed.

Our culture teaches boys to take. 

It does not teach them to give.

Quarter

"some dreams get taken before they
get broke and there are some who claim
that stars need their own galaxies
a vacant stage waiting for a scene"

["Deck in Between", Pathological Lovers]

Quarter.

For a few weeks leading up to today, I have been wondering what to write about.  I knew I likely would.  Even setting aside the date, several times of late I've come to Blog Spot intending to write and either opened a new post or re-opened the unpublished start of "46.1" that I tried several times to write a while back, typed a little, and then likely discarded what little I'd done before walking away.  It's unusual for me to feel like writing and yet feel like I have nothing to say.  This blog is normally quite the opposite.  I only write because I have something to say.

And so March 2nd arrived, along with that certain expectation that I would write.  If it is not on the part of my handful of readers, then on my own.  I like to blame them, but the truth is that it's a yoke I carved myself.  If there's one day of the year that the people close to me really know to just step back and give me space to do as I like, it's this one.  But I always expect myself to write.  I usually want to.  Seldom does the day come and go without me at least sitting to try. 

"Quarter".  That would be my title.  When I woke this morning, that was all I could decide.

It's been a quarter of a century since my mother died.

The idea of demarcating my life by milestones of "time passed since my mother died" is a bit sad.  I don't think of it like that though.  Not day to day, certainly.  I don't want this to be like that, exactly.  But I do take this day every year as a "day of reflection", and on it, and leading up to it, that question always pops into my head.  Wow.  How long has it been now?

I had lunch with Nancy, as I often do.  (Sometimes Susan, too.)

'How much do you still remember?' she asked.

"Bits and pieces," I said, "Just bits and pieces."

For a man who has cheesecloth in that part of the brain that's supposed to house memory, twenty-five years is a lot of erosion.  So much of it is gone now, worn away by time.  Lost.  'Like tears in rain.' 

My sister and I spoke a while, about many things, some of them the struggles of our youth.  The unfortunate truth is most of my childhood was watching my mother's downward spiral into quadriplegia.  The only memory I have of her actually walking is a foggy one I can't tell is a real memory of an actual experience or just a vivid recurring dream I had through my teenage years, and I'm inclined to think it is the latter.

So as much as I speak fondly of her and of the things I learned and of our time together and my immense respect for her, as a mother and as a person, most of my memories of childhood are not particular pleasant ones.  They are of the horrible, painful part of her life, and of ours.  They are of her struggle through MS.  Sure, I heard the stories of the past.  I remember the tales of dancing and skating and going for long walks with my father.  "I wore my legs out," she would say.  "Some day I will dance again," she would assure me.  I believed her.  But those were just stories for me.  I never witnessed any of those good times of her younger days.  They were legend.

Legend has it, there was a time when her life was full and fun and wonderful.  Legend has it, there was a time when it wasn't pills and wheelchairs and being carried to and from bed and up and down stairs, or struggling to find the strength to cough, or drinking with a straw because she couldn't raise a glass to her mouth.  Legend has it, there was a time when she was dating Dad behind her parents' backs and they came home early and he climbed out the kitchen window and she pretended she'd absent-mindedly poured two cups of tea instead of one when her suspicious mother asked.  How they loved to tell that story.

That was a great legend.

And that's why when I write of her, it's always about all the things she gave me, taught me, showed me - in spite of the odds being stacked against her - and not about the 'truly happy times' we shared, because, well, there simply weren't that many.  But don't think me ungracious.  She was, and a quarter-century after her passing, remains, an incredible human being.

After lunch, as I drove about running a few errands and picking up Dan, one of those few vivid memories I still have of her did surface and rattle around my head.  Twenty-five years of erosion hasn't left me much, but I'm glad it has left me a few things.  Bits and pieces.

Her whole body quivered.  She rocked and shook in her wheelchair.  She kept opening her mouth to gasp for air, but she didn't have enough strength to get the air into her lungs.  So her mouth opened and closed and opened and closed, and she shook her head in frustration.  She tried desperately to make a sound but no sound came out.  I could see tears welling in her eyes.

It was what I had just told her.  I did this.  I was filled with a flood of mixed emotion.  Telling her  was the right thing, but now the fear that I'd actually hurt her was rising up inside me.  I did not anticipate such a physical response.  This could be serious.  What if she really couldn't catch her breath?  Do I shut up or keep going?  She's so weak now.  What if this is the thing that kills her?

I kept going.  I wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do, but I kept going.  I couldn't stop.  I had to press on.  And she continued to rock and shake and struggle as I kept blathering on.

I have long ago forgotten what it was I told her.  I have long ago forgotten what tale of tomfoolery or winding joke or perhaps even drunken escapade of my friends and I it was that I spoke that day which got her so wound up into that state.

But I remember how her whole body shook and how she gasped, tearfully choking out an occasional audible chuckle, with her ear-to-ear smile.

I remember how sweet and precious a sight that full-body laughter was coming from her tiny, fragile frame.  It was a rare, chance miracle in our life together.  You.  Have.  No.  Idea.  

But let me assure you, if you did, you'd have kept going too.  

I had never before seen my mother truly, truly laughing her ass off.