"You're a Fighter, Baby"

A very beautiful soul used to tell me this. He was a free-spirit that perhaps let his ignorance of reality get the best of him. Growing up in a world where everything is handed to you with a side of cash, doesn’t keep your perspective of the real world in line with the truth. But he never cared about the money (why would you when it just keeps flowing). He just wanted to experience life. The good, the bad and the ugly.

I met Steve at a difficult time in my life. I was letting guys take advantage of me and constantly complaining about it. It’s always much easier to complain about your life and the way things are going then to actually do something about it. He showed me I was worth more and always convinced me I was meant to be something.

He by no means was as put together and mighty as this may come across. He was battling his own demons, which always led him down a destructive path. His optimistic view on the world had a way of convincing you that these dangers were healthy and made us feel alive. The truth was he was so empty inside and he was  just trying to feel. The sex, drugs and violence all made him feel something. He never blamed anyone for his emptiness. He just lived, truly believing we were in charge of our own happiness, and any affect anyone had on us was imaginary.

It was ironic because we significantly affected each other. He was my drug, getting me so high. And I was his antidote, bringing him down. I was always so hard on him for living in a fantasy world and he never understood how I lived in a world where my happiness was dependent on other people. As I struggled with finding my own happiness, he struggled with the real world crashing into his fantasy world. His lifestyle would catch up with him. Time and time again he would build himself up and then reality would tear him down. Rehab, arrests, he wasn’t invincible as the thought.

In November 2010, he crashed his car into a Jersey barrier and lost his life. Speed was the blame for the accident, officials saying he lost control of the car, but I’ll never accept that that was the only cause. He lived his life to the extreme and it caught up with him.

There was a short time where he was a big part of my life, and when I lost him, it was a tough reality to handle. He often would convince me that we could live recklessly and fight for ourselves. It wasn’t right about everything, but he was onto something with being in charge of our own happiness.

I write about him today because I ran into this brother this weekend. The emotion that I felt when I saw him was unexpected. And it was guilt. I had not thought about Steve in too long. Here I was at this transitional moment of my life, moving to a new place to start a new job, wiping the slate clean, and my past literally put itself in front of me. It was a reminder that we can’t escape our past, but it can’t be about who we are. I could constantly remind myself of his death and the tragedy of losing someone that close to me, or I could take what he taught me (the good and the bad) and put it towards building my future.  Even if I don’t think about him all the time (that would be emotional cutting), he will always be a part of me, giving me the encouragement to fight for my happiness.