I Found out My Ex Got Locked Up
His mugshot is heartbreaking. People are often bound to their circumstances.
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Instagram stories autoplayed and barely registered, until the words FREE JUSTIN lit up my screen over a picture of the last guy I dated. My heart dropped. He got himself locked up again. How long’s he been in? Instead of asking the person who posted it, I sent an open-mouthed emoji reaction.
I reheated leftover curry I wasn’t hungry for and paced shallow-breathed, knowing my next google search. His previous jail time was 9 months during COVID. “And I ain’t ever goin’ back in!” I could hear him telling me. The microwave beeped as I found his clickable name on the sheriff county office website. I held my breath.
Just then I got a text from a friend with a skater’s Instagram handle, someone she met last night, did I know him? I reviewed the mutual friends. All of them I know through Justin. The skate world is small, and in the city they stay stayin outside. I didn’t know him.
I clicked open Justin’s inmate arrest details and his mugshot took my breath away for the wrong reasons. Dark eyes. His spirit is broken. He’s tired, sad, worn down by all he’s seen and suffered. The page boils him down to nothing but state property.
How’s this the same person as the one in my phone? The one smiling, full of exuberant energy, rapping and dancing for the camera?
Scrolling down to his charges, I understand he’s looking at a long time in custody. At this age, it’s no turning back. He’s signed up for this life. How many more times will he repeat this pattern?
People are often bound to their circumstances. When he’d tell me about turbulent childhood, I’d envision an alternate timeline where he’s surrounded by the right support system.
He’d be an outgoing, young athlete turned skateboarder who eventually goes pro. He’d have a stable family life and be especially close to his father, someone who in real life died before he was born. He’d teach kids how to skate or otherwise inspire them; he has an effusive energy to him. Or once had.
Now, the holographic sheriff’s badge is emblazoned across his face—state prop, a number in the system. I clutch my woozy stomach and feel kinda weak. I think it equates to Truly Heartbroken.
Heartbroken for who he was when I met him in 2013, a highly buzzed about skater with real opportunities, versus who I see in the mugshot, someone who’s given up.
I need to wipe Justin’s lifeless-eyed image from my mind, so I open my photo archive to see if I can find his real essence. I immediately find two.
One displays his freshly washed curls, a springy tendril covering one eye, as he sips on a pink margarita over brunch with a sneaky grin. The other is a close-up under purple bar lights, lips curled, stuntin’ for the camera, eyes holding a hint of playfulness with a nod to the intimacy between us.
We were each other’s closest companions in the six months we were together, despite our worlds being galaxies apart. We were the same in that neither of us was what other people initially took us for. Strangers tried to talk to him in Spanish. Strangers tried to talk to me in Chinese or Korean.
To have that in common was more meaningful to me than I knew then. It feels good to know another odd-shaped puzzle piece who doesn’t quite fit into the puzzle.
Sometimes after taking his picture, I’d tell him he must be a shapeshifter. Depending on the lighting, or how he wore his moppy curls, would drastically change his entire face. He knew it, too.
He can’t shape shift back into the person he was before being locked behind bars twice. That person was no saint either but he wasn’t this, a soul suffocated.
I’ll never stop wishing so much more for him.