if only . . . .

it's the beginning of a series of thoughts many of us have when we're experiencing a life-altering experience, particularly one that we wish had not or did not have to have occurred. "if only i had done  this or that differently..." "if only i had been more aware..." "if only i knew then what i know now...." it's this last one that i've been pondering quite a bit lately along with it's fantasy corollary, "if only i could go back in time and make a different choice." i suppose it's natural to have these thoughts at the end of a problematic relationship. i know even in the midst of my relationship with michael, whenever severe challenges came, there was one pivotal night that i always went back to and wondered what would life be like if i had made a different choice.

the night took place a couple of months into our relationship and began innocently enough. michael and i met up for dinner and afterward made plans to go out with friends to a local piano bar that was a favorite of michael's. a nice dinner followed by visiting with friends on the outdoor patio of a fun hangout -- what could be better? well, as the evening progressed, michael had decided that what would make his evening a fun one would be to have whatever his favorite alcoholic beverage at the time happened to be (i'm guessing it was a cosmopolitan) and as much of it as possible.

as the evening progressed, michael became increasingly "physically" demonstrative. now you might think that my issue was some kind of discomfort with pda, but actually it was the fact that the gestures weren't loving and affectionate, but rather clumsy and inappropriately aggressive and very unlike how michael was under less alcohol influenced circumstances. i did my best to nicely and politely maneuver away from the scenario, but there eventually came the moment i had to tell him enough was enough. he wasn't happy about that and he pouted for much of the remainder of our time at the bar. i thought my drawing boundaries put an end to the matter and that we would have a more pleasant rest of the evening. seeing as i view this as a pivotal moment in our relationship, i'm thinking you already know that i was (as i would be in similar moments throughout the relationship) wrong.

when we got back to my place, no sooner than i had closed the door, michael lit into me with a tirade of verbal abuse that i literally had never experienced from another human being in my life up to that time. he went on for what seemed to be forever but was likely no more than 10 or 15 minutes. when he was done, he slumped down on the couch and passed out. i went over to the stairs, climbed up a few and sat there looking at him for quite some time in kind of a stunned silence. when my thoughts started coming to me, they were of the variety of, "what have i gotten myself into? this is not what i signed up for. maybe i need to end it now before i'm in this too deep."after awhile, i calmed down a bit and reasoned that if i wanted the relationship to go the distance i needed to learn that you can't run at the first sign of trouble or difficulty. and so i stuck with it.

over the course of the next several years, i learned that michael's challenges with alcohol would not be isolated to that evening and would result in significant further challenges in our relationship that would result in the first two break-ups (given the particular context of this story, let's say we suspend the drinking game for this one entry, shall we?). it may have even played a small part in this latest one as i realized not too long ago that despite his insistence that he had no need for alcohol, i learned (by finding the trunk of his car filled with wine bottles) that michael and alcohol were still entwined in their unfortunate relationship.

in any event, i have been thinking again about that fateful night. what if i had chose differently? what if i could indeed travel back in time and visit my past self, shake him and say, "run, don't walk out of this relationship as soon and as fast as you can!"? what if indeed.

now the conventional wisdom that we've all been given is that you should never want to change an event in your past because you have no idea how that may have contributed to the person you've become today. i've certainly lived my life with that belief but today i've been wondering, "is that really true in all cases?"

what about the person with a lifelong smoking habit that's just been diagnosed with lung cancer? would it really be so terrible for him to be able to go back and tell his teenage self to not pick up the habit? what about the girl who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy? Would it be that horrible if she went back, and even if she couldn't dissuade her "just a few weeks ago" self that sex with this guy could wait that she could at least make sure her earlier self made the boy use a condom? or what about even michael? what if he could go back and tell himself not to bother with alcohol because it would only bring about needless difficulties? what would that have done for his life? what would it have done for our life together?

there is this wonderful episode of the television series, star trek: the next generation (still, to date, my favorite incarnation of the star trek anthology) entitled tapestry (so wonderful in fact that i see in the wikipedia entry i've linked you to, the episode was ranked by entertainment weekly as the fourth best episode of that entire seven year long series). i won't go into details because you have a link to the synopsis (but i would recommend seeing if it's on netflix or hulu first and actually watching the episode. you won't be sorry that you did). within it captain jean-luc picard is given the opportunity to make a different choice related to a pivotal moment in his own life. the choice has profound ramifications on his present day life, and i've always looked at that episode as an affirmation of what i stated earlier in this entry as the conventional wisdom view that it is better to leave the past alone. in thinking about this episode earlier today, i did pose the question in my own mind, "but what about the scenarios i raised where it might indeed be a good thing to go back and change the past?"

then i thought of what is the pivotal message from the tapestry episode -- that our lives are indeed like physical tapestries, which likely have many loose and frayed ends. you may try to remove one, but you have no idea if that one will cause the whole thing to come unraveled. it's not about the fact that maybe going back in time may make our lives better or worse than they are today. it's about the fact that you can't know what past event is connected to which of the infinite other varieties of ways in which your life would have proceeded from that moment. and when dealing with infinite choices, maybe it's better to deal with the one choice we have in our lives today -- "to do our best, to give our love, and to be good to our troop"  (to borrow from a favorite quote from an unlikely source).

hmm, i managed to write something positive in outlook during this time of life. maybe, there is something to this idea of christmas being the season of miracles.