(Today we present part three of "The Difference Between Me", where I continue my brutal, online self-examination. If you found parts one and two too self-serving for your tastes, or if you are completely bored with hearing solely about me, you might as well go skip down to the bottom and read about Lisa's first horse jumping show. I'm pretty excited about that.)

I'm going to wrap up this series today with a bit of train of thought writing. I'm probably going to jump around a lot, so don't panic. Hold someone's hand if you have to.

It's my self-image that has changed most since high school, I think. Before high school, I was a nerd. A big nerd. A big nerd with goofy hair.

My self-image had never been good. The only thing I had going for me was the fact that I finally had my violent temper under control. As a kid I used to fall into a screaming rage at any kid who looked at me funny, and there were plenty of kids who would look at me funny just to set me off. While I would beat the tar out of them if I caught them, I just wasn't all that fast. There were many, many times when I ended up chasing some giggling, fatheaded moron around the school field, screaming incoherently and waving my tiny fists in the air.

I had my temper pounded out of me in junior high school by a gang who set me off and then took turns beating on me in a circle after they had knocked my glasses off. This was after the time, of course, where I chased my best friend Steven down the hallway and smucked him face first into a door. Ah, Steve. What good times we had.

The last time I struck anyone in anger was in Grade 10 when I popped Heidi Kruger in the nose after she yanked on the little hairs on the back of my neck. I feel completely vindicated in that one. Have someone yank on those sometime if you don't believe me. It's like they're a pull cord to the Cro-Magnon engine in the back of your head.

The last time I was even tempted to hit anyone was just after "Her Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken Lest She Reappear And Torture Me Anew" and I broke up for the final time and she had the gall to try to blame the whole thing on me during my birthday party. (More on her later.)

In fact, the only time in the last nearly seven years that I've really blown up at Lisa had me moving away from her while I shouted. It's kind of comforting to know that if I ever I lose my cool again, I won't resort to grabbing someone by the scruff of their neck and smacking their head into the floor like I did to Adam Monahan in the cloakroom in grade three.

Anyway.

High school was good for me. It was the first time I learned that coolness did not necessarily relate to your looks or the number of times you could kick a ball through two posts. I also discovered I could hide my insecurities behind extreme hyperactivity. It's a simple trick really. If you run fast enough, you won't hear people calling you names. Plus you can get to the cafeteria before they run out of hamburgers.

The other benefit was that I was finally able to start getting past the stigmas of my youth. No longer did everyone know about my temper, or the wild party I threw in grade 9, or how Leanne MacRae broke my heart at the first Grade 7 Jellybean Dance and everyone laughed at me. (She was a long-haired, 12-year-old goddess (who looked a lot like Kristin Kreuk actually) who would always dance with me throughout Grade 6. Then when I worked up the courage to ask her to dance in the beginning of Grade 7, she refused with a sneer and laughed as I walked away dejected.)

I also began to use the technique of 'complete cockiness'. One of my favorite stories comes from how I always managed to frustrate my Grade 10 section leader. Alan would always try to order me around from his lofty Grade 12 perch, and I would always demand to know why, and then refused to take 'Because I said so!' as an answer. After months of this, he finally demanded that I go with him out back of the school so he could beat the crap out of me. I looked at him from behind my coke-bottle lenses and smart-mouthed, "What the hell for? We both know you could beat me up, but I'd still not listen to you." I think I almost got him to yank his hair out. Good times.

Sarcasm stood me well in my university years. That and the fact that I encountered none of my tormenters there. The people I did know where the ones who were either my friends and friendly acquaintances in high school, like Grace and Kim, or people I had met through online ventures, like Mark and Jeanette. And sarcasm wins you major friends at University. I was a little social butterfly for a while.

Now we come back to "Her Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken Lest She Reappear And Torture Me Anew". Now I can't blame HWNCBSLSRATMA for everything in the relationship. A lot of it WAS my fault, at least in the beginning.

Hindsight makes the trap I fell into very clear. Take a high school geek with bad hair and glasses, and put him somewhere where intelligence is respected, cut his hair, give him contacts, and let him fill out a bit on the muscular side. Suddenly, his mental image of himself no longer matches his exterior. A whole caterpillar/butterfly thing. Guys are chatting him up and inviting him to manly events, women are taking extra looks at him and batting eyelashes in his direction...

I wallowed in it. My poor self-image gobbled up every bit of attention I could get. I was loud and brash, center of the party. An OUTRAGEOUS flirt, and I was doing some heavy bouncing between women.

Along came HWNCBSLSRATMA, a pretty young lass who expressed interest in my newfound manly virtues. We got together and had some fun. And then another pretty face winked at me and I followed her too.

Nothing too horrible, luckily enough. Some heavy smooching in the car, muffled fumbling in a movie theatre.

HWNCBSLSRATMA found out. By reading my journal. She had stayed at my house while I was school one day so she could study in a quiet place. She found my private written journal and read it.

In a perfect world, that should have ended it. I cheated on her, she read my private journal, both of which were grounds to end a three-week relationship.

But we stayed together for some reason. On my behalf I think it was my self-image again. I needed to believe myself to be a good person, and wanted to prove that to her. I don't know what her reason was, although my bitterness filter suggests revenge, but you how bitterness is about that sort of thing.

Her problem was that she could never get herself to trust me after that. She would lash out with accusations, make me shun my friends, play mind games with me (Once, while walking along the river after a movie one romantic night, she turned to me and said, "Let's play a game. I'll tell you what I want in a guy and you tell me what you want in a girl. I'll go first. I want a guy who is tall, dark, handsome... blonde... drives a cool car... is in really good shape..." She didn't seem to understand why I got so mad at her.

And then, after she would play games with my mind, or scream obscenities at me, or make me sit on the stoop of her apartment for three hours and then apologize for something she wouldn't tell me about, or unexpectedly take off a half hour into my birthday party, well, I would find some willing chippie and 'forget my troubles'.

I would let her hurt me, and then I would find someone willing to make me feel all-important and big again. Someone attracted to my wits or face for some impossible reason. I felt like since I was such a dork and a loser that I needed to grasp on to any offered affection, because I couldn't count on it ever coming again. Pretty screwed up, hey?

Our relationship was a complete mess. I kept leaping from feeling good about myself to feeling like something on the bottom of a shoe. Although she never found out for certain about my infidelities, she certainly suspected them, because she certainly never stopped making my life miserable.

Our friends all knew the solution. Break up. Easier said than done. I still desperately wanted to prove myself a good person, although I wasn't, and I never figured out what kept her around. I even bought her an engagement ring to 'prove I loved her'. I'm so glad we never went ahead with any plans.

I finally was able to smack some sense into myself. I knew I was treating her like garbage (didn't matter if she knew the truth, I still was wrong), and stopped cheating on her around the time I gave her the ring. I was determined that if this was to work, I would make the first steps. But it was far too late to be the big man.

If anything, however, her treatment of me went downhill. Our fights became longer, I stopped apologizing for imagined hurts (which made her even angrier), and we started the break up/get back together cycle.

I know I said it earlier, but I'm sure it's clear to all of you that we just should have broken up at the start. I could have worked out my 'issues' without hurting anyone so badly, and she could have gone off and done whatever. Pull wings off flies or something.

Hey, I never said I was perfect. But my relationship with HWNCBSLSRATMA had nearly the biggest effect on my development of anything else during that time. I was stupid and hurtful and thoughtless. I also let myself be punished long after I should have. I'm not saying I didn't deserve to be punished, because I sure did. But there is a line between punishment and abuse, and that line was crossed. A lot.

You know, looking back on that relationship is weird after all this time. This was like one year of my life ten years ago, but I still can't believe both how shallow and ignorant I was, both in letting myself act that way, and letting myself be hurt like that.

I did finally break up with her once and for all. It was a resigned sort of healthy breakup on both our parts. It was even casual enough that we had post-breakup sex a couple times. I suspect that was just so I would still share my 'Phantom of the Opera' tickets with her, because after that, she reverted to the bitter, blame everything on Phil attitude. It was really weird. She was nicer to me in the three months between the show and our breakup than in the whole year we were together, and then started telling everyone what an asshole I was within a week after the show.

It was around then when the incident I mentioned earlier at my birthday party happened. She just kind of pulled me aside and started berating me about what I jerk I was and how horrible I had treated her. That sort of thing is bad enough at the best of times, but to pull that at my birthday party...

I didn't pop her in the nose, thank God. What I did do was remind her in no uncertain terms that the problems in our relationship had not been entirely my fault, thank you very much. I reminded her that when you say the words, 'I forgive you,' you are kind of obligated to try to actually forgive them, and not make a person grovel and beg over and over and over for the same stupid mistake.

Before I get any angry emails (I'm sure there will be a few), I do realize I did wrong by her. But doing wrong does not give someone permission to make the rest of your life a merry hell. If you are in a relationship where your lover does you wrong, you have two choices. You can either work it out and move on, if you think that is possible, or cut your losses and go. There is no third option.

Ugh. You know, I'm going to stop talking about HWNCBSLSRATMA now. You know why? Because I still feel bad about hurting her, and still feel bitter about being hurt back in return. I'm starting to try to justify my actions during that period, and there is just no justification for our behavior. Either of us. I screwed up. She made me pay for it. It's over.

But it's not, you know? You can never walk away from anything you do. On the few times I've seen her since then I still get the creeps. When I saw Heidi at my class reunion a couple years back, I felt the need to apologize for popping her in the nose (we both laughed when she admitted she didn't remember it happening at all). I still feel bad for poor Adam. But he graduated as our valedictorian, so the stigma of getting beat up by the class loser didn't harm him in the long run.

Good lord is this thing getting long. But I still don't feel done. I've tapped a well here.

Part of my big shock coming out of high school and into the real world was that I was simply not as smart as I thought I was.

That was a huge shock. I coasted my way through school. I can't recall ever studying for a test or spending much time on homework. Usually I'd finish my homework in class and then I'd go home and watch the idiot box or read all night.

And my grades certainly didn't suffer. I always got grades in the 80's and 90's (except for that one option in junior high where they made the mistake of telling us our class marks weren't going to count towards our overall school grades. I got a whopping 20% the first semester and a record 12% the second. Who cared? I learned to meditate in my desk). So why would I study to get that extra couple percentage points?

Hindsight, eh? The point was that I needed to learn how to learn. I needed to develop a work ethic for studying that would translate over into everything else. If you put maximum effort into all your endeavors, you get maximum result.

I had a rough time surviving adult education. It was too late to develop the ingrained instincts necessary to survive college, so every day was a tough slog for me.

Heh. And the funny part is that since I lacked the determination to really buckle down and study, I also lacked the necessary determination to change my habits so I COULD buckle down and study properly.

This is not to say that I'm unable to change my habits. It just is really, really hard. And whenever I want to become neater, or get into the habit of working out regularly, or constantly work hard at the office (and not spend time surfing or writing), a little voice loafing back on my Medulla Oblongata tells me to lay off a bit and relax.

And he's a convincing bastard. The 'Slacking at the Office Tips' that have been appearing in this space for the last couple months come from him.

This lack of resolution or determination, or whatever it is, I think is core to my most irritating qualities. I hesitate in calling it laziness, because I'm not really adverse to hard work. Once I actually get going at something, I really enjoy it. It's just so damned hard to do it again.

Take this site for example. If you look at the archives, you can see that all my entries have come in waves. The original couple months were great, and then it all slacked off. A couple peaks, and then down again. Getting back to writing after my hiatus was the hardest part of this entire endeavor. December built me up some good momentum, but January has been pretty blah.

This series of articles again is an example of the problem in miniature. I set a goal for myself of writing at least three entries on this theme. There was a big delay between my announcement of what I planned and the first execution of the plans. Of course I then blathered on for page after page. Each entry since has been the same. A huge hurdle to lead, a mountain to climb, before everything starts to roll along briskly.

This is good for me though. Practice and determination are key to anything I want to accomplish in the rest of my life. I need to put my all into everything. I need to work hard, and play hard, and write a lot, and think a lot. I need to resist temptation at inopportune times, and find more appropriate times to play.

A new work ethic is what I need.

Damned if I know where I'm going to find it.

I'm going to wrap this series up on that note. I'm certain to continue revealing more of my inner demons in my entries from now on, but this will be the end of any official analyzing. Besides, the new season of Survivor will start soon, and we need the room for more bad predications.

I can't say for sure if I achieved my original purpose, but I'm hoping everyone understands me a bit more now. I actually think that I learned some new things about myself here. I'll call it a success then.

Now I need a nap...

One cool thing I forgot to mention in Tuesday's interlude: Lisa's first horse jumping show was this past weekend!

I don't recall if I mentioned this before in the journal, but Lisa has been taking horse jumping lessons for the last year or so. She's got the basics down now, and is at the point where she will actually start the jumping.

This weekend's show was a 'stable show', which is, I guess, the horse jumping equivalent of a piano recital. Everyone at the school gets to come out and show off what they know. Lisa participated in two competitions: 'Walk, Trot, Canter', and 'Hunter Pole Course'. The first is a demo of how well the rider can control the horse while switching between gaits at the shouted command of a judge. The latter is all about guiding the horse correctly between a series of poles. Like a standard jumping competition, but without anything to jump over.

She did good! She got 5th place ribbons in each set, with 8 competitors in the 'Walk, Trot, Canter' course, and 10 in the 'Hunter Pole Course'. And before you ask, these were people her age and older. The kids had their own separate class. She woulda whupped 'em anyway.

I'm so proud of her! Yay Lisa!

One Year and a Day Ago Today: In memoriam - where I have one of my first pet-related rants, after the death of my hamster Lovie.

Mom Rating: 0 out of 5. Not that Mom won't like this entry, but today is the day she's having her teeth pulled out. I'm sure she's not going to be happy with anything.

Previous: Rodent-Loving Criminals

Next: Manly men doing manly things

Take me home, big fella