Please, Forgive Me

Prologue - The Reasons

ADAM

I was never born to survive.

I wasn't meant to be.

Maybe you were, maybe you were born to do great things, have children, save the world. You know, take your place in this place and make it just a little bit different because you were here. Something small, a memory, would be left behind after you are gone.

I, on the other hand, wasn't meant to exist.

That simple fact is why I struggled for so long not to. But, if you fight life hard enough, it starts fighting back. I should have known that. I was never very good at knowing anything worthwhile. I simply just was, and there's the fuck of it.

I never believed in a God, never held a spiritual thing above me or any human being. Never believed that someone was making my decisions for me, or that they should. I never held a cross, looked upon a church or ate the body of Christ and believed in it. You would have thought I did, considering where I came from, where I went and what became my life. You would have thought that with the luck I had, I would at least start praying or believing. But, then again, I never did things the way they should have been done.

People love knowing where they're from, where other people are from, and what all of that information means. They love thinking about heritage, about bloodlines...

There's this unspoken hierarchy that comes with blood, one that we rarely socially accept anymore, but one that still shifts our minds, our perceptions, our ways.

I'm ready to believe those people. There must be some reason why some of us are born bad, wicked, stained, whilst others shine so brightly it blinds. If there is no reason for all that, then we have nothing to blame it on. If we don't believe in any God, we don't believe in fate, destiny, blood or the Easter bunny; then we have nothing to blame ourselves on. No one to take the hit for who we are. Well, no one other than ourselves. And that's a hard hit to take, one you might not survive.

I have no good qualities. None. I am selfish, aggressive, prideful without the story to back it up, shameless, arrogant and destructive. That is all that I am. Nothing more, nothing less. So, what does that make me in the blame game? Should I blame it on those who sired me? On God? Society? People around me? Myself?

The one thing I am, is alive. And even that I can't blame on anyone, not even myself.

This is a strange story, even though it is my own. I can't imagine you'll like me, or sympathize with me. You will probably downright despise me, and I am very much on your side in that argument because, like I said, I have no good qualities. But, if anything, like them, like her, sympathize with them, like them. Because without them I would have been gone. And with a story like mine it isn't always easy for other people to do anything at all, but they always tried.

I'm selfish enough to admit that, looking back, I don't think any of them would have been too great if I was gone, either.

Especially after she woke me up.

**

TINA

My mother told me, long ago when I was but a young teenager, angry and sullen and hurting, to never trust beautiful boys. She said "Beautiful boys always know they are beautiful, they'll know it and use it against you. Beautiful boys will tangle you in their web, make you believe the world is in their hand, but never fall for it. The illusion will fade and you'll wake one day and wonder where it all went". She never specified what she meant by a 'beautiful boy', never explained their characteristics or their ways, but in some ways I'm sure she meant it in every way the words could be understood. If they are beautiful on the inside; they'll realize that they're too good for you and walk away from you after you are hooked. If they're beautiful on the outside; well... you know.

This was a philosophy birthed from sorrow and anger, from hurt and one that maybe she shouldn't have bestowed on me at such a young age. But as it turned out, I began by not listening to her and finished with believing it in my bones.

As I learnt the lessons she tried to teach me and many more during my teenage years, lessons I hoped to never learn but which put their mark on me none the less, I've come to the realization that she was right.

Beautiful boys will hurt you, they will tear you apart, piece by piece until nothing of the you you used to be is left, and then they'll walk away. It might not happen the first year, or the second, but eventually? They'll tear you apart. One way or the other, they will shred you. I learned that and learned that good. Thankfully, that knowledge stuck for a rather long time, long enough for me to put pieces together again after so many pieces had been shattered off me by too many people, and long enough for me start resembling something like a person again. A person with a good life, a good beginning of a journey that seemed endless.

Yeah, I had that lesson ingrained in me for a while, I pieced pieces, I learned things about me and about the world that gave me some semblance of strength. Beautiful boys broke you and therefore I stayed away to collect my pieces to find the right kind of beauty and the right kind of passion, love, commitment... At least what was enough for me.

Then, I met Adam Martinez.