My 45th birthday is coming at me like a freight train. Reflecting on my life I am seeing so much that I missed out on. I was reckless as a kid. I did stupid shit like everyone else. Some less, some more. When I look back at my life there is more and more regret, that is usually cloaked in, “I was being careful because of X,” and “I no longer care because chaos is the new norm.”

Here are some regrets.

I didn’t have children. Logically I made it clear to myself that if I cannot give a child a better life than I had, then there is no reason to rope someone else into my shortcomings. Children would have been nice, I suppose. The thing is, the person I was in my late teens and early 20s would have been the person that brought them up and that dude was an asshole.

My inexperience in the world made what my family believed to be normal, my only real normal, unless you count TV depictions of a family life. In my 30s, I was not with anyone that wanted to have children with me, and I was in college, living with my relatives. That was not baby makin’ soil for a healthy baby. In my 40s I was learning what living with a woman I am not romantically connected to is like. It was something that I really needed. Perhaps my earlier years being more about physical connections was the cause of this. In any event, I felt this was a factor in why I chose not to have kids at the time.

My career path has never been clear. I worked jobs, but not professional employment. I had no real direction, no faith in myself, and I didn’t really have a clear, real, vision of my future.

I wasn’t in control of my anger and I took it out on people I really shouldn’t have. I hope one day they will forgive me, but I am learning to forgive myself either way. The reason my anger became an issue was because of my upbringing. That is not an excuse, it’s an observation and reflection. My family in all directions, had very violent and perverse ways to be adults. Dark humor and drug use was the norm. Children were more of a burden than a blessing. Finally, marriage was likely to fail and it was because the men were being too archaic and chauvinist. These were all really shitty things to drag a kid into.

My temper.

I didn’t fume, I boiled over. Rather than allowing a little displeasure out, I blew up. I yelled at people, animals, etc. This isn’t something I wanted to expose others to, but I did. I have apologized for most of those explosions, but I am sure that I missed people. My mom would say that I turn, “red like a tomato when you are mad.” I’m pale, I guess that’s pretty much going to mean I wear my feelings upon the whole of me.

Lucky me.

I have worked on my temper for years. While I was in college I finally started seeing a psychiatrist. It gave me the tools to begin working on myself. My anxiety was part of my fight or flight reflex being broken. I was hyper alert. I had to be. I was under constant threat as a child. My early life being filled with anxiety would build as my stress did and eventually, I would shout down the threat. These behaviors were not at all something that I wanted to expose children to.

Why would anyone who is a rational person think otherwise?

Even with all my work, I still have a point where I will bubble over.

Example.

Last week I was at the grocery store and loading up my bike to get the groceries home. As I was returning my cart to the bay, another man had pulled his cart up, directly to the door. This was going to block the entrance to anyone who might need more space to get in, it could just be an annoyance to another person, but honestly the dude was less than ten steps to the bay and still decided to park that cart in front of the doors. Full disclosure, the dude also annoyed me in the store because he was in front of me in line and dicking around while paying, walking away several times to get “just one more thing,” then blocking me from paying once my groceries were scanned, because he was slow walking all this groceries into the cart.

I popped. It was a little pop, but it turned big.

I tell him, “Hey, the cart return is like ten feet away.” He responds, “Great, then you put it away.”

I do, because that is messed up for the next person. I also said, “Lazy bastard.”

Oh this dude did not like that. Very much one of those snowflake fragile ego white men decrying outrage with even a single hint that their behavior is not appropriate, and essentially, they should be perfectly welcome to treat everyone else like shit, but talk back to them, oh the outrage!

This dude stomps up to me full of outrage. “What the fuck did you say?”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“I called you a lazy bastard,”

The fella takes a swing to slap me, like the little bitch he is, and I pull back last second, so it only grazes my nose. He doesn’t take another swing, I didn’t take the bait to start swinging myself, we live in a society and this is inappropriate behavior. Nope. I am not going to get into a fist fight over your baby soft snowflake fragile feelings being hurt, cupcake.

“You realize you just assaulted me, right?” I told him.

“I did not!” HIs anger at being called out heavy in his aghast voice.

“Yeah. You did, you caught the tip of my nose and that camera up there, it saw it too,” I tell him, smiling because fuck you and pointing at the camera.

He starts stomping away, saying something stupid that I decided to taunt him over. True to the form of the fragile white male, he comes stomping back over because I have the audacity not to stay silent after his barb. He gets right up into my face and says, “You are one ugly mother fucker, you know that?”

Oh no. He doesn’t wanna screw me. My heart is broken. No I didn’t say that, I just laughed at him and that is usually enough to escalate the issue… and it was.

He pulls free a taser from his pocket. With the little flashlight taser in hand he crackles it and says, “Oh you want to do this mother fucker?”

I continue smiling and then sneaker. I once more point at the camera. “That would just be further damning evidence of your assault, go for it,”

That seemed to finally unnerve him and he stomped away, got into his white Subaru SUV with the license plate…

A woman walked up to me, while I was calmly getting ready to ride away and said, “Good plan to wait until he leaves, he might try to run you over,”

“That’s not it at all. That there is a telephone tough guy. He doesn’t worry me at all. I’m just waiting…” I say, as the man begins driving past me to pull out of the market parking lot. “For him to go by so I can get his plate. We live in a society and that is unacceptable behavior,” I finish, as I write down his plate, him staring daggers at me, watching me do so and finally putting the pieces together that he might have just messed up.

Now. That seems like a reasonable encounter. No one died. I didn’t even yell, I just said a few unkind things to a jerk. My therapist and I agree that I could have handled it better, but hey, everyone screws up from time to time. I should have been able to just let that go. Then again, I stood my ground, I didn’t fawn, I didn’t pass out, I didn’t explode, I didn’t take the bait to escalate it to a physical confrontation. Overall, I think I did well. This was a bully and again, I didn’t fall to pieces.

I should be able to see the progress I am making, but I am simply blind to a great deal of it. It is so gradual that day to day, it is just water dipping into a bucket.

The other day I got a barrage of texts from my little brother that were filled with insults, anger, and threats. I archive his messages and they rarely pop back up. I didn’t reply. I read it, but I didn’t reply. I felt no need to defend myself from this person. I’ve been here a couple years now and all it’s come down to in that time, is shouting. He gets drunk, then gets all Biblethumpery and informs me how I am going to hell, what Qanon thinks is happening this week, and other dumb ass conspiracy theories he has seen recently.

I just don’t need to get into these arguments. It isn’t cowardice, which he claims, it isn’t fear, it’s just the logical conclusion that his opinion of me does not impact who I am. He is doing this because he is drunk and because my mom is winding up my siblings against me again. She periodically sends me a message she means for a sibling and it gives me a barometer about how much she currently hates me.

Rather than snapping at the message, I sent a more, “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed,” reply to her.

She had said to a sibling that nothing in this house gets done, unless she does it.

I replied,

“I'm Jesse,

I vacuum fairly regularly, you don't at all.

I tend the cat boxes every day, you don't.

I walk the dogs, you don't.

I feed all the animals regularly, you don't.

I do almost all the dishes in the house, you don't.

I cook, you don't.

I shop regularly for things you like, you sometimes do the same for me.

When you're telling people how lazy I am, please consider that.”

I am getting my temper under control, but it slips from time to time. Even when it slips, it's far less than when it would happen before I started working on it. I barked at an asshole. He deserved it, I held my ground, I kept my head. That is progress. I am not retaliating against my brother and his shitty drunk comments. When I caught my mom spreading negative gossip, I held my cool.

I am making progress.

My therapist said of the man with the cart, “What do you think he would have said if you had changed your opening to the conversation to something like ‘Are you done with that cart? Here, let me help you with that.”

I’ve thought about this for a while now. It might have been better, would have been kinder and more non confrontational, but my reaction still feels like it was the right thing to do. This guy has a major entitlement issue and likely believes he intimidates others, so acting in that way will not get him into trouble. I think this was a good lesson for him. For me? It was a good experience. I didn’t pass out. I didn’t fawn. I didn’t lock up. In the end it was an empowering experience.

This interaction wasn't role model kind of behavior. That isn’t being someone I want to show children is a good example to emulate. I don’t think I am at a point where I would be able to show children the best me regularly and that reaffirms my decision not to have children.

All that being said. Something inside me feels like my step dad stole away one of the supposedly greatest joys in life, the reproduction of self and guiding someone into a quality person that you leave behind as a legacy.

Sometimes that hurts.

Most of the time though, I just feel like I kept another lost soul from wandering a dying world and being raised to think being an asshole is somehow a virtue. I ensured I didn’t leave more negativity as my legacy. I didn’t lay down roots for another cycle of poverty and abuse.

I think that could be a legacy in itself.