People like to pretend as if the people in their past haven't shaped their life. "I did this, I made it on my own, I made my own choices." Yeah, it really should go more like " I did this, but could have never done it without so and so, I made it on my own after someone got sick of my shit and kicked me out, I made my own choices because I had no other good choices with or without such person in my life". This pompous type of thinking is really convenient in American society. Unless, of course, you are murdered.
If you are murdered every bad choice you ever made in life is somehow out of the victims control. It is the murderers fault, right? Every choice in life you ever made is now victimized as if you were a saint who's choices were made because of extenuating circumstances beyond your control. You could be the biggest asshole in the world, but that wouldn't matter, unless of course your a prostitute. Then you deserved it, right?
On the flip side, people who are driven to murder because of circumstances literally out of their control are now evil fucking bastards who knew what they were doing all along. Any good they have ever done in life is now forgotten by the one horribly unforgivable act that everyone will always remember them by.
Everyone will hate him. Everyone except for me, and the few people that loved him enough to know better. I'm not saying he was perfect. Hell, I'm not even saying he was a good boyfriend. He was a cheat, and totally fucking clumsy, but he wasn't the evil wife beating husband that the news had portrayed him as. No question there, he was my Josh. My first love. My first everything.
We met in high school. How cliché. We didn't meet in class, or at a sports game or anything. I was never a cheerleader and he was pretty lousy about going to class. It was in the parking lot that I first laid eyes on him. The parking lot where the skaters and stoners sometimes crossed paths. I was a Stoner, which is humorous because I hate that shit. I just found Stoners easy to get along with. He was a Skater, which is funny because even though he skated he really was the epitome of what our school considered a Stoner. He was always smoking cigarettes, frequently high on anything, but he could skate so he was a Skater. We were young. It's a good time to do stupid shit you would otherwise end up in prison for long.
I'm not going to get into all are romantic bullshit, because like I said: This book isn't about them. I can tell you, he was wonderful. I loved his strong legs, big arms, and Elvis smirk. I hated his habit of self medicating and cheating. He was such a romantic that would literally drive thousands of miles to see me for a weekend. He was the type that would do anything for those he loved. But like I said, he was a cheater, and so was I. We were young. I'm not mad at him.
Girls like me don't get mad, they get even. The first Christmas he ditched me to fuck his former girlfriend while high on cocaine was heartbreaking. I'm a strange one though, once my heart is broken I like to grab the heart of the heartbreaker out of their chest, squeeze as hard as I can, release it, and do it all over again as if I'm some sort of fucked in the head Disney villain.
Our relationship went on like this for years. We hurt each other, got back together, and so on. This is why it was such a surprise when I found out that he had created some sort of pipedream out of me. I'm really not that special. I'm not a Disney Princess and I never will be, but for some reason, in his memory I was perfect and innocent, something I can assure you I'm not.
