Recently, I was doing a Google search for someone I used to know. I did not find what I was looking for but my googling fingers would not quit. I did something scorned exes and brokenhearted lovers have been doing for a decade.
      I looked up my ex-fiancé.
      Sheer, morbid curiosity.
      You see, we broke up back in 2004. Right after New Years, then about 48 hours reconciled in February, and done entirely after that. He moved back to Ohio in June and that was that. Haven’t heard or talked to him since. I know, from previous curious/stalkerish searches, that he had had a MySpace page after we broke up and was living in New Jersey. Last I saw, he had a very, very young girlfriend living in another state and that he’d been super-active in the Civilizations-builders’ community.
      That’s all.
      Well, I hadn’t been able to find any “online footprints” in several years… apparently nearly five years, in fact, but it isn’t like I had been keeping track. I just figured, when I was googling him the other day, that it was odd a guy like Christopher hadn’t made any online footprints since 2008 or 2009. It wasn’t like him.
      I wondered if he had ever found happiness. I hoped so. His childhood was truly fucked up and his mother really messed with his brain. He was an odd duck, I thought, but even odd ducks deserve to find a bit of happiness in this bleak world.
      I actually included him in my prayers from time to time. Is that weird? I just hoped that even though we were DEFINITELY not meant to be – that maybe he had forgiven me for being so cruel to him in the end (yeah, I know, Josie was a bitch? That’s no surprise to anyone). I figured that by now, since I was married and happy in the glorious year 2013, he must be doing well. Finally found a reason to get off the computer for good.
      Well… he did.
      A felony conviction will often do that for you.
      I don’t know the details. But when I clicked on the “image search” section of the Google search I’d done, lo and behold, I found a mugshot. And there is no doubt it belonged to the boy to which I was once engaged.
      He was convicted of sexual assault of a minor child (under age 16) in Wisconsin.
      I just…
      There are no words.
      I always knew he was weird. I mean, c’mon, he was living with his ex-girlfriend in Texas when I met him (and they were actually living with her Aunt or something odd, because they were broke) and he thought nothing of picking up, hopping on a Greyhound, and moving to Washington to move in with a girl he’d met playing RWK on the interwebs. Weird. He was socially awkward, could barely make eye contact, cried when I left him home alone sick one day (and then walked 10 blocks to my BFF’s house, where I was hanging out and sobbed on his front porch), alienated my saintly mother, was despised by my friends and family (especially those who made a genuine effort to like him for my sake), cheated on me with one of my best friends (before he moved in, for what its worth), cheated on me with online chicks (and tons of soft-core porn I kept finding after he swore it was over), could not hold a job, was generally loser.
      He meant well, he was occasionally very sweet and thoughtful, and he really did seem to love me.
      But I never suspected, not even a little, that he was the type of guy who would end up incarcerated, a convicted felon, for sexual assault of anything or anyone, let lone a child.
      Dear Lord in Heaven, thank you for not giving me a child by this man.
      Dear Lord in Heaven, thank you for giving me the strength to break away – even if it took me a full year and a half to do so.
      Dear Lord in Heaven, thank you for showing me that I was worth more that. That I didn’t have to settle for the one guy who said, you’re cute despite being fat. That I deserved love, real love.
      And thanks again for Mark. For his crazy love, for his super-smart boy voice, for his mad brilliance. For his utter lack of felony convictions.
      Happy Birthday, my sweet wonderful husband.
      And yes, this was a queer way to get around to that.

Note: Image is “Security Fence 4” by saavem from SXC.hu