You look back on your life, and if you’re anywhere near my age, you’ll see great things.
I won’t.
You will see some pretty dark stuff, too. I do see that. Stuff so ugly you might have even forced it down inside yourself so far that it took what’s called a “trigger” to bring the ugly back up. Everyone has those kinds of memories, and not one among us can deny it. Maybe the memories still hurt. Maybe you’re ashamed of them. Or maybe you just get angry. Maybe it renews the part of you that ended that memory, that situation, in a way you regret.
I don’t get that. My ugly is always on my mind. I never buried it. There was no place to put it. I was full of ugly things. Memories. Emotions. Anger. Hate. Pain.
And when I was a real asshole, that constant stream of ugliness in my head got in the way.
Of everything.
I was stuck. But I didn’t think of it that way. I just felt and did things I could not understand.
I hurt people. And revenge was not beneath me.
The last woman I was intimate with has passed. The short time we were together is a painful and embarrassing memory. I should never have had anything to do with her.
I stayed with her for a week. She was so horrible that I was miserable. One day she kicked me out. Then left for work.
Did anything I just say strike you as being a bit dumb?
Well, all of it is.
But I mean the part about kicking me out and then leaving for work. Especially after treating me so terribly.
Never do that. It’s asking someone to take revenge on you.
And revenge was definitely on my mind. After loading my car I had hours to spare before she returned. I went to work.
She was always locking her keys in her downstairs apartment. So she left a window unlocked.
I locked it.
Then I went to her doors, front and back, and filled the keyholes with crazy glue. She would not be sleeping inside this night. Not unless she got a locksmith. And since she left work at 23:00, an hour before midnight, she wouldn’t get one. But I wasn’t finished. I put a liberal amount of Ben Gay in her Noxema and mixed it with a pencil. God help her when she finally did get in and head straight for it.
I turned my back and walked away.
Never piss off an asshole. They can change into a dick if pushed too far, and putting them on the street without notice? That’s certainly a way to make the change happen.
I regret it, but I can’t change it. The regret reminds me that revenge doesn’t feel good. It leaves me hollow and it is evil. There’s no satisfaction in it.
I have done this in worse ways, with no physical action on my part. I’ve told lies to shift blame onto others for what I had done. Betrayal of friendship, an end to it forever. A burned bridge that can never be raised.
If you search my archives going back two years, you’ll find other things that I have done to turn my back on someone who never deserved it. Oh, some did, sure. Toxic, dangerous people who had negatively influenced me. People who used me. People who I was just better off without.
But mostly, I just turned my back and left them behind. And certainly I don’t count the number of people who I just drifted away from, which is absolutely normal but still sad.
My life has been, very often, a lonely one. I came to embrace solitude because I had no one to answer to and no one’s feelings to worry about. But after a time I would become disoriented by it. One time I worked a month’s hours in two weeks and then happened to come home while there was still daylight and the house looked alien to me. I kept looking around to figure out what was out of place. Nothing was, but it looked so different that I was honestly afraid.
People, I believe, are meant to be social creatures and alone, they can become dysfunctional. Something cannot remain missing without causing damage. But some people are so broken that a social life is out of the question. They don’t have the tools for it. These people are regarded much as they always have been: hermits, witches, warlocks, nuts, monsters, demons. History is stuffed with stories of the macabre and the superstitious people who hated anything “different”.
In my life, I was counted as shy when I was a kid. I was really hungry for friendship, though. But already I was broken. By the time I was in fourth grade it was probably already too late. All of my friends knew something was wrong. My enemies knew how to exploit it.
Some are gone, passed into the next chapter, the one awaiting us all. I am in touch with none of them.
Some, I knew on Facebook. Years after grade school, though, they aren’t the neat kids I knew. Pasadena seems like a bastion of redneck conservatism. Those who have moved away included. Pasadena’s big, so not everyone grew up to be dicks, but in my neck of the woods, or the area I grew up in, well, let’s just say I’m not going back.
If one thing has made me happy, it’s that last night I called my older brother. Joe was happy to hear from me. We talked a while. Past things, present things.
I told him I can never face the others again. I described what happened in my post “Why So Angry”, an unfortunate family thing that happened just after my son died. Max Lucado once wrote, “We carry the stones of regret in a burlap bag everywhere we go. Sometimes we throw those stones at the people we love.”
I was doing that. I broke contact with everyone.
Burned every bridge, closed every door. Can’t go back. Can’t fix it. He alone means too much to me to do that to. In this I find hope for my soul. As if, perhaps, it can be salvaged. Maybe even redeemed.
But I’m so broken. I never knew how much I was broken until I began this blog two years ago. As I’ve been triggered or inspired, I wrote. Not just about what was done that broke me, but what I’ve done as a broken person. I have to reassure myself that I do at least have a heart, a conscience, and a few morals. If the Lord is merciful, they might be enough to save my soul.
Having been an asshole for years, I am frightened. I’m running short on time here. I have so many stones of regret in my burlap bag. They’ve gotten in my way, slowed me down, hurt me.
I don’t know why I got stuck. I don’t know why I could never go anywhere with my life. I’m just broken. And more and more, I feel how alone I really am. I can’t pray. I’m that broken.
So I ask, if someone out there can have pity, please say a prayer for me. For my soul.
It’s now 12:30 in India. 08:00 in England, 10:00 in Finland, We may live that far apart, but I am thinking about you and I’m grateful for you. Be well, and try not to burn any bridges today.
Memoirs of an American Asshole 