What made us think that we were wise

In which our Hero is reminded of rednecks and regret

Thinking about the past seems to bring a catalog of memories to the fore, most wanted, some not.

I’ve been watching a reality television show called Duck Dynasty. The slugline description is probably about fish-out-of-water rednecks trying to run a serious business, but it doesn’t sell the show at all. I mean, they’re totally rednecks and things get blown up, and shot, and eaten, but they’re also a family of honest people who have a deep integrity and more wits than you’d give them credit for at first. Usually I find reality TV unwatchable, and it’s consistently for the same reason, that the people on the show are people who I just don’t like, and as entertaining as it is to watch them be venal or stupid or naive or inappropriate, in the end the fact that I don’t like them makes me want to not spend time with them, even on the tube.

But these people, I like. I’m probably too much a city-boy to actually fit in with them, but they’re people I’d enjoy having for friends or neighbors. On the other hand, watching a family of rednecks reminds me of the other loss that comes from my ex, which losing the people in her family that I came to care for. Her grandfolks were getting on in age even the last time I saw them, looking at possibly moving to a home so they could have a space they were better able to manage. And I loved them, sincerely, and regret that my anger at the ex kept me from saying at least a goodbye to them and thanking them for their generous kindness.

But thinking of regrets leads me to a different one. I’d even noted it as a possible entry topic, not so long ago. It starts with a confession of a poorly kept secret: A little after things ended with the ex, I had a brief fling that ended awfully. I kept it quiet as is my way, but the other party told a selectively detailed version of how I’d brutally wronged her, and a number of people who knew both me and her baffled me by denouncing me on her behalf.

Now like I said, it ended awfully. She was right to say that I sent a very harsh letter making very clear that we were done; there was nothing gentle about it (which is where I think the peanut gallery felt I’d crossed a line.) But she didn’t mention that it was a follow-up to the previous letter that had been much more gentle that she chose to ignore or misunderstand. Which was preceded in turn by a much more gentle message that was trying to offer a face saving opportunity to back things up and just go our separate ways.

I know I was hard on her, and I can’t dispute that if I’d been less gentle from the start, I might have avoided the need to escalate. I could have defended myself at the time by explaining the background, but I don’t actually look at my life as a performance piece and there’s a clear difference between friends who call me on my bullshit versus spectators just looking for the return in a tennis match. The former can be very direct, but they make their love felt even while they’re shaking me. The latter can fuck themselves slowly with a broken bottle crusted with salt.

Unfortunately, knowing how I wanted to handle the situation did not make it hurt less to be judged by people I thought would know me better. It was a bad situation, but it turned out that the worst part wasn’t the ending, but the fact that the ending because just the start of something else.

When things ended, they ended entirely. I had no interest in allowing any other opportunities to misunderstand where we stood. I didn’t seek out contact, I didn’t try to find out how she was doing. But various mutual acquaintances would occasionally update me on her doings. Second-hand updates from someone who has a very subjective view of her own life and now told again from my memory years later. I know this and I’m aware of it even as I go on with the telling.

What I got, however much truth there was in it, was a telling of a pattern that profoundly disturbs me. I kept hearing how her new guys would read like clones of me, pursuing them until things fell apart and then doing it again. As funny as it is to see this scenario in a sitcom, it’s deeply disturbing to have someone focus like that on you. I try to remind myself that what it really would mean, if true, is that rather than me being the mold, I was probably just one more of the type she was already fixated on… but I don’t remember seeing a pattern like that beforehand, and even though it’s very probable, it doesn’t make things any less uneasy.

Handling it with what was meant to be humour, I made a joke of it with those people who insisted on catching me up, that I’d broken her with how awesome I was. But time passed, and people would tell me more of the same and eventually someone else made that same joke back at me, “You broke her!”

At the start, making it myself, the joke was at best a dark-and-bleeding kind of funny at best. Coming back at me, it turned out to be horrifying. Add the idea that she was pursuing me as either one instance or worse as the original of a particular archetype and the whole picture settles in like the stomach-unglued feeling of a roller coaster.

I know that all of this is ultimately a fabrication based on facts heard second-hand from a source more artistic than objective, coloured by regrets already existing. It’s probably not a true telling of how things played out for her. I certainly hope not; I wouldn’t wish it on her, and I certainly find no pleasure in it for me.

So I reflect on it all, and see that there is nothing about the entire situation that I would keep. Not one thing. It was a stupid choice to indulge at all, it was a stupid choice to let her into my space, it was a stupid choice to try to be gentle when I stopped ignoring my own better judgement. I have a moment that taught me nothing new and makes me the dumber for recycling mistakes. And I realize now that for the first time in my life I have a regret that I would go back and erase entire.