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Excuses and reasons and screw-ups, oh my

2004-10-14 - 6:34 a.m.

Disclaimer

I�m not generally one to intentionally make excuses for my bad behavior. Taking responsibility for my own actions was drummed into me from an early age� probably drummed a little too firmly, in fact. I can still recall the utter contempt with with my grandmother would answer my attempts to explain the reasons behind some offense I�d committed. Her lip would curl in disgust as she spat: �That�s just an excuuuuse!� I don�t even remember now what the offenses were, and maybe my reasons WERE actually just excuses (I was a teenager at the time and probably had the reasoning skills of a turnip.) I didn�t listen when my family said things like �don�t drop out of high school� or �you�re too young to get married� but I sure did internalize the whole �don�t make excuses� thing.

There is a difference behind a reason and an excuse. A reason says, �This is what motivated me to act that way. This is why that action seemed like a good idea to me at the time, even if it didn�t turn out so hot.� An excuse says, �Here are some mitigating circumstances that forced me to do something I wouldn�t have done otherwise. It wasn�t my fault.� Excuses ARE often �just� excuses, an attempt to be let off the hook for something you out-and-out did. And I understand my grandmother�s irritation at my attempts to explain: just because you had reasons, even good ones, doesn�t mean you aren�t responsible or culpable for your actions. (Stealing bread because you are hungry is still stealing, and still punishable by law. And breaking curfew because nobody you were with was wearing a watch is still your fault and punishable by grandma.)

Still, not liking to be misunderstood, I have often felt a desire to analyze and explain the whys behind my behavior, and hence my grandma�s comment about �excuses� was flung at me quite often as a kid. The line between �reason� and �excuse� got a little blurry, and if looking for reasons was tantamount to shirking responsibility for �I fucked up,� then eventually the only reason that doesn�t sound like an excuse becomes �because I am a bad (lazy, inconsiderate, thoughtless, selfish) person.� That reason doesn�t attempt to excuse anything, and allows me the illusion of retaining the integrity of my values system. At the cost of my self-worth of course, but, you know, whatever. At least when I admit that my reasons don�t matter, that a decent human being would not have done THAT for any reason, and since I did 'that' obviously I�m not a decent human being, at least I can lay claim to a tiny shred of strength of character. So now if I�m aware that I�m screwing up in some way, I am less likely to acknowledge the reasons for it than I am to simply believe myself to BE a screw-up with no excuse.

That I even feel the need to explain all that feels like I�m making an excuse for being about to make an excuse� gah. I�m not trying to make excuses, dammit! I�m trying to figure out the reasons and motivations behind some things I�ve done that I�m not proud of. I want to understand. And I�d like to maybe replace the �I�m a bad person� reason with �I did some bad things because�� reasons. It doesn�t mean I�m going to start feeling ok about those actions.

As I read over my fidelity issues entry, all I can think to myself is �man� what a cold-hearted cunt.� The actual incidents are kind of fun to think about in and of themselves, if I ignore for the moment the fact that �Hello�WHORE. You were CHEATING on your husband. Not funny.�

And so now we come to the whole �Don�t blame me, I�m from a dysfunctional family� rationalization. But see my long-winded explanation above. I�m not saying I couldn�t help it or didn�t know it was wrong� I just chose a bad way of dealing with a situation I didn�t quite understand.

If you�ve ever had any experience with recovery you are probably familiar with the saying that alcoholics and others in dysfunctional relationships don�t know what �normal� is. They�ve never seen normal and healthy up close. Even if they come to understand that their situation is NOT healthy, they still may not know what an actual healthy situation is, and are still in danger of making bad choices even as they attempt to find something better.

My mother was an adult child of an alcoholic. Something about the scars of her upbringing caused her to gravitate to extremely unhealthy relationships with men. Blinded by her weird, co-dependent �love� for each new man, it always took awhile for her to realize that the situation was unhealthy (and often dangerous,) and longer still for her to get up the gumption to leave. Yet instead of taking the time to seek out a truly normal and healthy romantic relationship the next time around, she maintained a pattern of jumping out of the frying pan into increasingly hotter fires with each new guy she hooked up with. My mother started out being married to a critical, controlling but mostly normal guy (my dad;) then she hooked up with a married man who knocked her up and abandoned her; then she married and spawned yet another child with a psychotic, alcoholic abuser; then she married another man who was falling-down drunk ALL the time, who never worked and used to steal money from her; then she got into a series of one-night stands, one of which led to her shacking up for a few months with a patient she met at the VA hospital where she worked, who I suspect was mildly retarded and certainly had other �issues.� She eventually by some miracle started dating a very nice man who seemed like he really liked her and who was making settling-down noises. Within a few weeks she dumped him cold for no apparent reason and immediately took up with a guy she met at her new job. He had just been released from a nine-year stint in prison and she�d known him for about a week before she dumped the nice guy and moved Prison Boy into the house with her two preteen boys, where he quickly took charge of abusing and fucking up everything and everyone in the household, and eventually managed to separate her from her entire family.

I watched all this from near as a kid, and from farther away as an adult, and tried to help her as much as I could, and I swore that I was never going to be like that. I�D never put up with that kind of abuse or substance abuse from a man, by god. Well, aside from my first marriage to a controlling, critical, emotionally abusive drug addict�

That first marriage scared the hell out of me. I realized that I was fully capable of traveling the same path my mother was on, and after I got myself out of that fucked-up relationship I swore again that I wasn�t going to live like my mother had lived, and THIS time I meant it.

To be continued�








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