Cowardice

"I figured out the only way, 
the truth will get you through the day
The only way I’ve ever learned, 
was through fucking up and getting burned"

["Baton Rouge", The Town Heroes]

I think I'm a very self-aware person.  I spend a lot of time in reflection.  That's not to say that I live in the past so much as that I'm determined to learn what I can from it.  There's no remediation here; we get one life with no do-overs.  For someone with as shitty a memory as I have, I feel surprisingly good at picking isolated little tidbits out of the murk that is my past.  

I endeavor to live my life with few real and lasting regrets.  I have one big one resulting from a drunken blackout, one medium-sized one resulting from a handful of bad decisions I somehow turned into a painful relationship, and a handful of little, simple ones.  Like I never take enough photographs, or having thrown away photographs I wish I'd kept, or not generally writing or recording enough, considering that shitty memory I have.

The little regrets speak to behaviours I'll probably never change.

But there are a few mistakes I made in the past, mistakes that impacted others, and for which I've never properly apologized.  I'd call them small regrets, and regretting these didn't actually come until years after they'd happened - 'a few versions of Pat later' - when I finally understood what a turd I had been in those moments.

Rational as I am, it's as easy for me to justify my own cowardice as anyone.  It's second nature, isn't it?  Despite my keen self-awareness, it's a peculiar blind spot.  Is it this way for everyone?  I can only assume so.  Have I never apologized for such incidents because I rightly believe that they're so long ago they'd be long forgotten, to bring them up would be unjustifiably re-opening someone's wound, and that attempting to apologize would essentially be asking the hurt party to alleviate my feelings of guilt, putting the weight on them to relieve my burden, itself an act of self-indulgence?

Or...

Am I just convincing myself of that because making such apologies to now-strangers for solitary acts of unkind words from 20+ years ago is incredibly awkward, I'm a coward, and I don't want to muster up the courage to risk looking like an idiot?

Maybe?

So I thought maybe if I wrote about some, at least acknowledged the wrong-doing without involving them, then with no expectation of the release an accepted apology might bring, it might be a bit less selfish.  Maybe?  Of course, I had that thought two or more years ago when I started drafting it.  This is one of very few entries I've ever started writing, put down, returned and edited, put down, and rinse and repeat without actually publishing ad nauseum.  So... I'm leaning toward yeah, coward.

My head is a strange and sometimes uncomfortable place to live.

These events, though very long ago, changed me as a person, though it may have taken some time to do so.  A friend once commented that I was someone who taught her to 'consider the other person's situation', and I immediately thought of these incidents and their impact on me.  The indelible regret of my buffoonery makes me a better person, serving as a reminder to constantly strive to be a better person.  

From the point in my life where self-reflection made me realize how wrong I was in those moments, I have been a better person for it.

I present two examples.

[Note: I'm a boringly-hetero cis-gendered male.  I write from that perspective because it's what I know.  It's certainly not any sort of dismissal of the varied experience of others wherever they fall on the gender and sexual spectrums.]

Back over 20 years ago, I was working with a woman with whom I didn't connect.  We were very different, and while she'd never done anything to wrong me, I'd decided I didn't like her.  I felt, for whatever reasons, she wasn't pulling her weight.  But I think mostly, I just found myself attracted to her and resented her for it because I knew that attraction was not mutual.  

[A fundamental crux of fragile masculinity, something I'm glad to nowadays be free of.]

So one day, while she was not in the office, I made fun of her in front of some of the others.  I don't recall the words, but I know I made some childish, sexist jibe about her posture, suggesting perhaps she stood a certain way and walked as she did to take advantage of her 'best assets', a not-so subtle implication that she was less than in every other way.

Word got back to her about what I had said, and that night she confronted me about it one-on-one.

She was righteously indignant, and she tore me up.  She absolutely shredded me.  She left me a blubbering idiot.  She made me realize that I was the one with the power and the privilege and the agency, and that rather than lifting someone up I was using it to punch down, to abuse someone in a more difficult position than me just so I could feel better about myself.  She justifiably denounced me for my egotistical and self-aggrandizing judgment, my intolerance, and my cruelty, all of which I'd wielded against someone who'd done nothing to wrong me, and for no reason but my own immaturity.  She torn me down, and I bloody well deserved it.  If version 53 Pat could go back and watch her serving it up to v21, I assure you v53 would applaud heartily.

And she may not have known it then, and she may not know it now, but she delivered unto me a lesson in humility that has lasted a lifetime.  In that moment, she changed me.  Perhaps I don't owe her a "sorry" so much as a "thank you".  I made her hurt; she made me a better person.

My second example is simpler but without the comeuppance. 

This event was simply a case of me losing my temper with a woman who was flirting with me, at a time when that flirtation was unwelcome.  Oddly, I don't even remember why it was unwelcome.  It's not like me to not appreciate flirting.  Why, if you knew my father or know my older brother, you'd know I come from a long line of flirters.  It's practically a family tradition!  And she was someone to whom I did find myself attracted.  Perhaps I already had a girlfriend at the time and her advances made me uncomfortable in that context.  I can't rightly recall. 

But what privilege and power men have to be able to stand and push back so easily in such situations without the fear of reprisal that women suffer when things are in the opposite direction.  We dismiss out of hand without having to make up fictitious partners or lie about our sexuality.  But I digress.

On that particular day, for whatever reason, I did not simply push back.  I pushed back hard.  I did not merely reject.  I spoke loudly and made sure the whole room heard as I rebuked, embarrassed, out-right humiliated.  Because I was angry, and I lost my temper, and I lashed out.  Heartlessly.  My words were meant to cut, to hurt, to break, to tear down.  I can only imagine they did.  So few times in my life have I ever truly lost my temper (five, I count), and of those, so few times have I lashed out in such a hurtful and regrettable way.  And she took it.  She took it.  And as the blood drained from her face and her smile turned to a frown, she walked away, mortified.  Humiliated.

And only on reflection long after did I think, "wow, what an asshole am I?"  She was not and is not a bad person.  She was not deserving of such ire then or now.  I understood later the power that words have, to build someone up or to tear them down.  I have endeavoured since that day forward to always choose my words carefully when dealing with people's feelings, and to never let myself lose my temper, or allow myself to speak from such temper like that ever again.

After not setting eyes on her for about 20 years, I had occasion to see her a number of years ago.  It was a pleasant, cordial conversation.  I sat across from her and we reminisced about working together way back when, and as we chatted, and before we chatted, the thought of apologizing turned over and over and over again in my head.

I thought to.

Didn't, of course.

But, you know... thought to.

Because that's how cowardice works.

I guess I'll probably not link this one on Facebook, hey?