Everyone, at some point in their adult life reflects on how their lives came to be the way they are. We never pictured ourselves to be unemployed, broke, divorced, relationship challenged, without children or whatever the case may be.
When you’re 16 years old, the common thought of the future is going to college, having fun with friends, graduating, obtaining your dream job, getting married, having a few kids and living happily ever after.
I went to high school with a guy that had everything going for himself. He had excellent grades and a full football scholarship to one of the best African American colleges in the nation. He wasn’t the best looking guy, but he definitely had his head on straight and probably would’ve made some lucky woman very happy one day.
He had been dating a young woman about three years older than him. She already had her own apartment. (Mind you- we’re 17 year old seniors in high school, so she’s 20 years old with 2 kids!), which automatically told me she had a different upbringing than he did and a lot more life experience. He had been seeing her for about 6 months and approximately one month before we all were supposed to depart for our respective colleges he was brutally killed by his girlfriend’s baby father!
The story was that he was totally blind sided by the fact that this woman had a boyfriend who has in jail. All that knew him knew that if he knew about the boyfriend in jail, he wouldn’t have started a relationship with her. And she didn’t even have the decency to share this information with him either. He was caught at her apartment at the wrong time; her boyfriend went into a jealous rage and stabbed him numerous times, killing him. I’m sure he felt he was doing nothing wrong at the time by dating this woman… in his mind he was there simply spending time with his girlfriend… her baby father saw it differently and the rest is tragic history.
Everyone in this situation had choices. My high school friend didn’t have to date this woman with 2 kids and an angry baby daddy and stuck to girls his own age and caliber. He made the choice to date her.
His girlfriend could’ve told him what he was getting involved with and given him an opportunity to make an educated decision on his involvement with her. She chose not tell him that she had a man in jail and he was coming out soon.
Her baby daddy didn’t have to kill him. He chose to take someone’s life because of his cheating girlfriend and go right back to the place that would keep him away from her and his kids.
The list of choices goes on. But someone made the wrong one… an unchanging choice. The repercussions are endless, not only for the family of the victim, but for the criminal and the woman and children involved. I wonder what ever happened to them. Did this event define their lives? Did they learn and grow or did they suppress and fester? Was his innocent life sacrificed for some greater good that the killer, woman or children would benefit from? We’ll never know.
To this day, the death of my friend pops up in my head every now and again, especially in the summer. Every summer, without fail there is a heart wrenching story about a promising college bound student who needlessly lost their life in some urban area in NYC.
No matter what kind of situation you find yourself in, choices are always present and the smallest choice can have the biggest repercussions.
