New Hat

I bought a new hat today. I'm not a shopper and it's not just any hat. The closest I can come to explain it is that the complete stranger behind the counter that cashed me out took one look at me and said: "You couldn't resist, could you?"

It's more than a hat. It's a way to white wash one of the more unpleasant memories. Unpleasant because I can usually figure things out eventually and this was one where I couldn't figure it out. I still can't. I couldn't figure out them and I couldn't figure out him and I couldn't figure out why I told his sister what I told her something like that or why his little freak boy brother did what he did.

The entire family is a bit off the mark. Kind of an anomaly and it made me want to distance from them but, I was young and he was cute and the coolest guy in the Engineering department, and I had a bit of an issue with finality anyway, so instead of just parting from the entire lot of them I opted for complete baffling and random acts of self destruction. I would say that the majority of self destructive things that I've done in my life have to do with the opposite sex. What else is new?

Well, back to the hat. I had a favorite black cap. One day we were standing in the subway with his idiot brother and the big oaf decided that he should adjust the brim of my cap. It was too straight for his liking and so rather than gently creating a curve Attila cracked it right in half. In my shock I just stared in disbelief. Heart broken at my loss and feeling violated by this teenage mutant of a boyfriend's brother. All he did was grin in his oafish grin. To this day I have no idea if he didn't mean any of it or if he was trying to do something mean. It's been ten years and I still think it was more than a benevolent attempt to correct his impression of my fashion sense.

After that, I tried to still use the cap and try to replace it but, in truth the incident marked a bit of a scar on a few levels. My boyfriend made no attempt to come to my defense and the look on his face was a milder version of the oafish expression on his brother's face. It was more than the demise of my cap it was the realization that really there was no relationship worth saving either.

My new hat is a redemption hat. The past no longer matters. None of the people that were part of my life when the black cap was around are part of my life now and I'm tired of tending those scars. It is impossible to learn from mistakes that have never been fully understood and ten years is enough time for trying.

Still I can't help but wonder if the reason I told her that story is because I was trying to distance her or if it just the excuse I told myself after the fact because there is actually something really wrong with me that I told it to her in the first place.