Have you ever done something that if the people around you found out you did it, it would change how they look at you, what they think of you? That it would literally change their worlds, and yours, forever?

I have. And I did.

You see, a little over four years ago, I committed a crime. I did something that could get me locked up for the rest of my life. In some areas of the world, it could get me executed.

I have committed Murder in the First Degree.

It was premeditated. I did it in cold blood. I did it without remorse as to the suffering of the individual that I killed. And I would do it again given a chance and if I had to do it again.

Who did I murder, you ask?

Just this guy I knew. I knew him my whole life and he was one miserable, unhappy son of a bitch. In all honesty, what I did to him shouldn’t be classified as murder, if anything, I should get a medal for what I did. If anything, I should be considered a hero. I don’t consider killing him as an act of brutality so much as an act of mercy. I put that motherfucker out of his misery.

I grew up with this guy and I watched him grow and do his thing. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, but he couldn’t see it. I tried telling him time and time again that he was good enough, but he wouldn’t hear it. I watched him hurt himself with drinking, the occasional drugs, and the shit food that he ate. I heard him talk of dying on and off throughout his life. If anyone wanted to die at one point or another, it was this friend of mine.

He was a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but god he could be a doormat sometimes. It was pathetic really. It was sad to watch him settle for less when he could have had so much more. If only he could have seen what I saw. You can’t make someone see the truth though, they will only see it when they are ready to see it.

That’s why I don’t try and “fix things.” People are going to do what they are going to do, and you can tell them all the reasons that they should or shouldn’t do something, but until they have crashed and burned enough times, whatever you tell them will fall on deaf ears.

There’s a meme that does the rounds on the internet and has done those rounds for several years. It goes something like this:

“What advice would you give your younger self?”

And of course people throw all sorts of nonsense out there about what they would tell their younger selves, about how if their younger self listened to their older self, their lives would be better somehow.

It’s all bullshit of course. What advice would I tell my younger self? Not a goddamn thing. Why not? Because my younger self had it all figured out and had all the answers and wouldn’t listen to guy an older guy like me, not even when it was me. It’s truly awesome being a late teen/early twenty something and you know it all.

Same thing could be said about my friend that I ended up killing. He had all the answers too, and you couldn’t tell him anything. Since he had all the answers and his life was such shit, I figured that all he wanted to do was die, so I obliged him.

One night I snuck into his house, creeped up to his bed, and woke him up when I put the barrel of a gun against his forehead.

It was so quick that he didn’t have time to say anything. But his eyes. Oh his eyes said all sorts of things. Mostly pleading with me not to kill him. But kill him I did. He needed it. He had it coming. And I’m glad I did it. Like I said earlier, I would do it again. The only thing I would do differently is I would have killed him sooner than I did.

The day after I killed my friend I told my now ex-wife that I wanted a divorce.

I won’t bore you with the details of that set of conversations and dramas, suffice it to say that ultimately here we are.

One of the things that I did say to my ex-wife though was this:

“Don’t consider this a divorce. Consider it a funeral. The Man you knew and loved and fell in love with is dead. I killed him. The Man standing before you looks just like him, so much so it could be his identical twin, but I’m not that Man that you married.”

Yes I killed him. Guilty as charged. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.

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