Young Writers Society

You know that old romantic stories where there’s a guy in trouble and then comes the special girl who saves his life and they live happily ever after? Well, at first I thought it was all bullshit. I mean, come on… How can a girl just appear from nowhere and in a few months change someone’s life? Someone’s screwed life, I might say…

I said “at first”… Now I just think it might happen…

Maybe you are asking yourself what could happen to change my thought like that, right? Probably you said “oh, this guy met the love of his life and now everything is perfect”.

It’s not true… I don’t know her yet and things are as far from perfection as they can be. I will tell you now what’s going on, just… Please, don’t blame me.

Maybe you figured out I was a sick bastard when I younger. Started doing drugs when I was seventeen, stole all kind of things to buy the drug, spanked my mom when she tried to lock me home… I can’t believe I’m going to say that, but it’s a good thing my father had died a few years before, or else I would have killed him, his heart being so weak.

And then one day I raped my neighbor’s daughter .She was thirteen years old.

Of course everybody knew I was responsible for that, even if she hadn’t told them. So, I was arrested for four years.

I don’t need to tell you what I saw in jail. Actually, I don’t want to remember that… Anyway, I got out, came back home and decided to go back to my old life. On the first week I had my first contact with cocaine and LSD. My poor mom found out and she confronted me once again.

“Come on, old lady”, I said, “do you think you can lock me? You couldn’t do that when was seventeen years old and had some respect for you!”

Remember what I asked you before? Please, don’t judge me. I know I deserve all your hate for talking to my mom like that, but…

Well, I saw my cry like I had never seen before. And then she told me what would change my life forever… Ana, that girl I raped… Well, she killed herself after giving birth to a girl, Elena. My daughter.

Oh, man, you can’t imagine the impact it caused on me. I wasn’t even high anymore. I mean, at that time, I couldn’t even feel the effects of cocaine in my body. I just thought about my daughter.

And that’s what I told you. My life was changed by a perfect, amazing, beautiful young woman. I’m clean for the past two years and I’ve been trying to see my girl for the same time. The photograph I now have in my wallet is the only thing I was allowed to.

So I came here to ask for your help, your trust. I know I made some terrible mistakes, but who didn’t someday? I’m still a human being, I recognize my mistakes, I want to make things right for the first time. I still love. Please, let me have the right to hug Elena, to look into her eyes and I say I love her. Let me apologize for what I did to her mother, to teach her how to make it through this world on a different way that I did.

It was said by John Matthew Collins in front of a jury on March, 13, 2008. He still fights for his daughter.