Top Gun

Stuck to the inside cover of the old toolbox I used back in the 1980's, is a movie stub from "Top Gun." I think I went alone to see it. Maybe not. But for whatever reason, the movie affected me enough for me to stick the stub to my toolbox alongside the puppy dog and kitty cat stickers, where it still sits, nearly 21 years later.
I was living in the old farmhouse by the river. I was 25 years old. I used to go to the little gift shop in the nearby mall and buy cute little stickers cos I wanted a cute little life. My life was anything but cute at that point. Derek was doing mounds of cocaine with the whore kathy. I was wearing the weight of our silly little world on my shoulders. I was in big time denial. I just thought if I believed everything would be all right, and worked hard, and kept optomistic, life would be good. But it's hard to carry the load all alone. Derek dragged on me like a dying dog that had enough life left in him to make things even more difficult.
They say there's always two sides to the story, but it was all Derek's fault. he blew money on cars and junk and drugs and left it to me to pay all the bills. If I tried to talk to him about it, he said I was being unfair.
So if anything was my fault back then, it was that I let him get away with it. I just kept hoping he would "see the light."
Maybe he did, but it didn't happen in the years I knew him. He was a man who appricated crutches, he made the most of them. I was his biggest.
I guess I think about those days as I want to enjoy them the way I could not back then. back then there were too many painful dramas going on. And yes, it was all Derek's fault. We could have had such a wonderful life together. But unlike Jimmy Stewart's George in "It's Wonderful Life," Derek could never see what might have been been. He was too busy following his ego and his insecurities.