how spectacularly we contort ourselves before our own eyes, and the eyes of others

    Are there levels of wrong, in your hierarchy of human failings? Do you make distinctions by degree, splitting the hairs of intent, or of profit v. indifference, or of one person's perceived pleasure in another's pain? Are some things "totally wrong," while others are only "kind of," depending upon the circumstances?
     My first few trial runs toward young love did not proceed smoothly. I was an awkward teen (yes, I know that every teen is awkward, but I really was. Trust me.) and I was excessively self-conscious. I also had execrable taste in potential mates, which still persists at times. The way that I saw it then was that I was 'shopping outside of my price range,' setting my cap after fellas who were interested in girls who were more ... than me. More what? More woman than girl, more interpersonally approachable, more girly, more sparkly and fun. In other words, I perceived them to be worth more, on the social marketplace, than I was. To even out that inequity, I either had to take drastic action to attract their attention, or be willing to settle for a lower return on my investment. I had some sense of self-worth, though it was not what it should be, so I discarded the first option (which would have had me handing out the milk for free, in the vernacular) in favor of the lesser sting of the second. It seemed to require that I gather up my pride and accept that I would be but one option of many, and that I was welcome to argue, but that the eventual result would be my congé.
     It was not always that way, of course. There were some guys—boys, really—who were never like that. Scrupulously careful to be out of one thing before they started another, they were at least as protective of their hearts as we girls were. For this, they developed the awful reputation of being "too nice."
     The others were "bad." Why is bad so appealing?
     A couple of those first 'bad guys' successfully indoctrinated me into this society of pointless, mutually-destructive behavior in the most familiar and painful way possible: they cheated on me. The first did it blatantly, telling me that he would, that he was, and that he had, and then daring me to do something about it. I ended up hurt there not because I was so emotionally involved (though when you're seventeen, everything seems to be emotionally involved), but because he withheld something that I wanted, which perversely made me want it all the more.
     The second, though, knocked me flat. It was a classic "me" story: I saw him from afar for months before we even spoke for the first time, and my crush was as lovely as it was agonizing. I thought there was no chance (because he was so far out of my league, naturally), until mutual friends set us up. Once we met formally, we couldn't find enough time to spend together. We always had a great time. I flipped head over heels immediately, and I thought that he did, too. He even told me that he loved me before the words had solidified in my mind, much less on my tongue. I wasn't even making plans for "what if" or "when we," just living the life I was given and loving it.
     That all exploded in my face when I found out, through a mutual friend (who I hadn't realized was a mutual friend) that my seemingly terrific boyfriend was engaged to someone else. They'd been together for a long time (four years) and had decided to see other people, to "test their love." I was one of the other people.
     After that ended, I went on a tear. Well, actually, after I stopped drinking heavily, crying, and playing depressing music 20 hours a day, I went on a tear. I revised my plan: no more love, no more consideration, no more emotions at all. I was just going to have fun, in whatever form that took, and feel no guilt. And I did, for about a year, maybe a year and a half after that. I drank like crazy, went out to the bars three or four or five nights a week (I was underage) and to house parties, made friends with loads of people in part so that I could use them for their access to alcohol and attractive guys. And I started working my way through a whole new crowd of potential "mates," albeit for vastly different reasons than before, and with totally different results.
     Some of those guys had girlfriends. They were in relationships, had been for however long, and intended to continue to be so. And I came barreling along, drunk and focused (if such a combination can exist), my victim in my sights. Sometimes, I literally wouldn't rest until I'd succeeded in accomplishing whatever mission I'd set out on, whether it was just to get attention or to dance with a specific person or to get a ride home, or somewhere else, with that person. If you don't know me face to face, you may not realize that while I'm generally not such a powerhouse, I can be a force of nature when I try.
     Here's where the impetus for this post came in: who's more wrong here? My actions weren't right, obviously. I did some dreadful stuff, on purpose. I did it in reaction to some dreadful stuff that had been done to me, at least in part. I wasn't mature enough to sort out what I should have gotten from having been cheated on by someone I loved, and I lashed out any way I could find. I loved Brian, so I couldn't hurt him. I hurt someone like him—a guy with a girlfriend, who cheated on her.
     Who, though, in this sequence, is the most culpable? Is it the one who cheated on me first (and his fiancée, at the same time)? Is it me, for even with the mitigating factor of having been wounded before, intentionally (to whatever extent that's provable) turning it against someone else? Or is it the guy with whom I cheated, who willfully turned his back on his own girlfriend in order to take advantage of what seemed temporarily to be a better offer?
     I'm not really looking for an answer here, because I don't actually think that it exists. I think that we tend to take a legalistic approach against wrongs that we've already condemned, or those committed by individuals that we dislike for other reasons. We are also more lenient or understanding about situations that we've considered more carefully before, or those undertaken by people that we care about or about whom we feel protective for other reasons. It just makes me wonder, though, whether I'm worthy of my friends' friendship, in some ways, and why tolerance is sometimes so hard to bear.

[the title quotation is by Roberto Bolaño, and reads in its entirety: “What twisted people we are. How simple we seem, or at least pretend to be in front of others, and how twisted we are deep down. How paltry we are and how spectacularly we contort ourselves before our own eyes, and the eyes of others...And all for what? To hide what? To make people believe what?”]