Self portrait

Well, I won't start this post by formally acknowledging the fact that I haven't posted in months...over a year...oh hell, a really fucking long time, because that would be stating the obvious. Suffice to say, I'm really sorry that I abandoned my readers and subscribers the way I did and, despite a false start last year, I intend to keep Disasters In Dating running for a long time yet. Now, on with the show...

 They say that mistakes are there to be learned from, and it is a mantra that I try to pass on to my son as often as I can because, at the age of fourteen and a half, he has entered that wondrous time of life where a shitload of mistakes will inevitably be made. Most will be minor errors in judgement that, while earth-shatteringly significant at a time when your entire existence seems to hinge upon popularity (it is a perception I am doing my best to break, I assure you), will loom about as large as a dying sparrow's fart in a hurricane when he's forty. Then there are the big ones, the colossal cock-ups that have long lasting and far reaching ramifications which, fingers crossed, I'm confident G won't be making anytime soon because he is neither a) chronically neglected nor b) an ego-maniacal bully or a blind sheep. He has his little crises of conscience, and has even admitted to me that he might 'experiment' one day, (oh shit). But 'Not with drugs,' (oh, bless), but for the most part, he is turning out to be the wonderful human being I always knew he was. Lucky for me, he has a fully functioning moral compass, (thank you, G's Dad), but still accepts everybody equally and without judgement (that one's down to me, *self high five*). Long story short, while his year twelve year book probably won't contain pictures of him kicking the winning goal in the inter-school footy final, I'm certain his class portrait won't be used twenty years from now as a before shot in a Sixty Minutes story.

 Most people wait until their adult lives to make mistakes that will haunt their daily existence. G won't be one of those people, but that won't be because I've been such an impeccable example. On the contrary; I have made quite a few errors in the last twelve years or so that no amount of mashing on the delete key is going to erase. Some of them he knows about, some he doesn't - and for good reason. The most serious of these was a "relationship" with a guy that I, for some unfathomable reason, never quite seemed to get over. I wrote three posts about it, (What I left on the ocean floor; Re-gifting the ruby slippers; and Two exes, no waiting). My long term readers will remember these posts, and will have undoubtedly noticed by now that they have been deleted. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I recently started seeing him again, and because he was there for me recently when I needed him, I didn't want to take the risk of him reading the posts and being embarrassed by them. No, you are not being at all harsh if you are sitting there calling me insane. Please feel free to screen-print my picture from Google Images and scrawl several more harsh but nonetheless accurate derogatory names on it in red marker. The second reason I deleted these posts was that, despite any personal aspirations I might have to the contrary I am, for the most part, full of shit. I thought that I was displaying some sort of artistic and moral (there's that word again) integrity by removing the posts in which I oh-so-eloquently waxed on about the self-loathing and emptiness that accompanied being involved with a married man in a relationship that never really existed above the waist.

 Yes, I suffer from depression, but I'm old enough now to know that it is not an excuse for deliberately perpetrating an act this heinous. What am I getting out of it? Attention, affection, the ego boost that comes from the fact that someone can look at my non-mint-condition body and say how beautiful it is. I can assure you, I find all that as incredibly wet and pathetic as you do. I won't make the argument that because I'm not actually cheating on anyone, I'm only half as culpable as he is. That would be like saying that taking someone to a box factory, handing them a lighter and a can of turpentine and letting them decide what to do with them makes one person less of an arsonist. Whatever Aaron gets out of this thing we have, good or bad, isn't for me to contemplate. As I said, he was there for me recently when I had a crisis (my landlord refused to fix my central heating and my radiator broke, so rather than see my child and I spend the winter huddling together in front of the TV under a quilt, Aaron went out and bought us a brand new heater). Considering the risk he was taking, this was an incredibly selfless act.

 He is not a bad person.

 That would be me.

 My definition of a bad person? Someone who continually displays selfish, self-indulgent, feel-good-at-all-costs behaviour without regard for any damage that might be done, because their needs are more important than anyone else's. For Christ's sake, I sent my son to his Dad's last Friday night so Aaron and I could have a dirty weekend while his wife was away. I put shagging my non-boyfriend ABOVE spending time with my own child! Not that I told G that. What I told him was that I went to a birthday party with some friends from high school. A child's self-image is largely dependent upon his image of his parents. My portrait has been censored with a rather large black sticker.

All men aren't bastards!

My mum is a tough lady.  She has survived some incredibly hard times that would have seen a weaker minded person declared certifiable, and she got through it all by virtue of her sheer, steely determination.  Once she sets her mind to it, there is nothing she can or will not do.  Unfortunately, it's a character trait that wasn't passed down to me; I inherited my dad's Cross-that-bridge-when-you-come-to-it/Don't-stress -until-you're-down-to-your-last-five-cents attitude to life, which is something I've always been ashamed of.  But there is a point when determination becomes blind stubbornness, and when it comes to men, my mother reached that point years ago, crashed through the road block and kept on driving. 

As with most women who've suffered a lot of heartbreak, Mum has major trust issues with the opposite sex, and I can understand why she's reluctant to ever enter into a relationship again, but the zeal with which she's adopted that old eighties 'All men are bastards' philosophy alarms me sometimes.  She doesn't hate men in general; she just thinks that they metamorphosize into thieving, skirt chasing Mr Hydes once they get their own set of house keys, and has erected an Olympic swimming pool-sized moat around herself to keep them from getting too close.  Mum told me not long ago that the reason she was so glad she had a daughter was because she'd envisioned us being more like sisters, and I know she's always been a little disappointed that she didn't get the kindred spirit she'd hoped for, but the fact is that despite my own similar experiences, I love men, don't believe they're all bastards and wouldn't mind having one share my life again some day. 

As I've said before, my skill for character judgement is rather sketchy, but like any other skill, it needs to be honed, and I think everyday life is doing a decent job at that.  It's taken until my fortieth year to finally begin to learn to trust my gut, and my gut says that not all men are bastards, any more than all women are bitches.  Stereotypes are like cliches - they might roll off the tongue easily, but they're over-used, ugly and, ultimately, meaningless.