Rantage ahoy. Bieber fans, the back-button is thataway. *points up*
Looking at the number of serious tweets using the #WeWillAlwaysSupportYouJustin hashtag is making me physically sick.
Let me tell you all something. I was in a car crash as a child. I couldn't have been more than three or four years old. My mother, who at the time was pregnant with my little sister, was driving me to preschool. I remember everything about that morning with almost supernatural clarity. I was thinking that my school uniform was itchy. My mom was changing the radio station, and I was asking her to stay on this one particular channel because a Spice Girls song had started playing. She was teasing me, calling me Scary Spice while I protested and insisted that I was Posh Spice. My unborn sister was to be Baby Spice, we both decided.
And then suddenly there was this horrific jolting and a high-pitched screeching noise. From that moment on, everything is a blur. I remember my mom screaming and hitting the brakes. I remember the car skidding to a stop. I remember my mom's hands frantically unbuckling my seatbelt. I remember hearing an intense roaring, and to this day I'm still not sure whether that was just blood rushing in my ears and adrenaline or an actual physical sound. I remember my mom pulling me out of the car and running awkwardly to the sidewalk.
A van had slammed into the backseat of our car. It was orange, and that's all I remember about it. I couldn't see the driver. I have no idea why, but the thought ran through my mind that maybe it was good thing that I couldn't. Maybe I subconsciously knew that the sight of blood, or maybe recognising what might be a dead body, would unhinge me. Passersby stopped to gawk at the incident and call the police. One of them turned out to be my teacher, who was on his way to the school as well. He took me and my mom in his car and brought us to the head office, where my mom called my dad. The principal told me I could be excused for the day,
My dad drove to the school and picked me and my mom up (they were still together at the time). He was furious. I had never seen him that mad. I don't remember much of what he was saying, but I do remember that he'd said he'd already spoken with the police and that they needed a statement from my mom but that it could wait until tomorrow, and that the driver of the orange van was drunk.
I was three. I didn't know what drunk meant. So I asked my dad, and he said, "Drunk is what happens to you when you drink too much alcohol. You can't control your body and you get really dizzy. And driving while drunk is one of the damn stupidest things you can ever do." I had never heard my dad swear before, so I was shocked. This must be something really serious then, I thought.
It wasn't until I was much older that I truly realized the implications of what had happened that day. Imagine if the outcome had been different. If that orange van had been driving just a little bit faster. Had he hit my mom's car a little harder. I might not be here today, typing this. My mom might have died and never gotten the chance to create and give birth to my little brother, who was born four years after my sister. My little sister might have died in utero.
And that's only the possibilities. Imagine all those people who have died because of some dumbass who decide to drive while under the influence. Imagine all those people who weren't as lucky as me and my mom. Imagine all those people who have lost loved ones because of some idiot's stupid decision.
Here's another story for you. One of my college classmates died because of drunk driving. We had just graduated. It had barely been a week since our graduation ceremony. We were all excited, all ready and raring to conquer the world. Some of us were looking for work, others were heading for law school. And that girl had it all ripped away from her.
Do you understand that, people who are defending Justin's drunk driving? IT HAD BARELY BEEN A WEEK SINCE THAT BEAUTIFUL GIRL HAD MARCHED DOWN THE AISLE IN A TOGA TO RECEIVE HER DIPLOMA.
Her name was Irene. She was funny and loudmouthed and knew all the gossip about people in school. She loved to talk. She loved to eat. She was generous and had a warm spirit and she was rich but she never showed it off. Her name was Irene, and she was gonna be a lawyer.
She had fought through four years of pre-law and she was ecstatic to have finally graduated. She was out for the night to have a good time with friends, to celebrate this new chapter in her life. But the book was abruptly closed by a moron who decided that driving his brand new sports car while three sheets to the wind was a good idea.
Irene lay in a coma for a week and a half before her parents finally decided to pull the plug. She's buried in her hometown in Laguna, and her best friends still visit her grave every month.
Think of all those lives that have been snuffed out by an idiot's decision to drive while drunk.
And please note, I said decision. Because driving while under the influence is not a mistake. Leaving your keys or your wallet is a mistake. Putting sugar in the salt shaker is a mistake. Spelling a word wrongly is a mistake.
Getting behind the wheel of a car when you know full well that you have no business driving is not a mistake. It's an idiotic, selfish thing to do.
"Oh, but he's only 19!" Fuck you, so was I a year ago! And it would never have occurred to me to drive while under the influence. NEVER.
Justin Bieber doesn't need his fans telling him that what he did was okay. Justin Bieber doesn't need his fans telling him that he's human and he made a mistake. Justin Bieber does not need his stupid, irresponsibly actions validated. HE NEEDS HELP, AND YOU PEOPLE TELLING HIM THAT IT'S OKAY, THAT HE'S FINE, THAT YOU WILL SUPPORT ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING HE DOES, IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO THE POINT OF SHEER IDIOCY.
And for god's sake. The surviving family members and loved ones of people who have died in drunk driving accidents definitely do not need you saying all this bullshit on Twitter and other social media websites. No. Just, no.
So all of you ridiculous Beliebers and fans of other celebrities who think a DUI is no big deal, who support your idols' decisions even when those decisions involve things that could kill people, I fucking dare you all to spout off your nonsense bullshit defending them for drunk driving to someone who's lost a loved one in a car crash. To all you people tweeting #WeWillAlwaysSupportYouJustin, I fucking dare you to say those things to a mom whose kid died because of a drunk driver, to a husband who lost his pregnant wife and child all at once, to parents whose teenage son was good and responsible and would never drunk drive but died anyway because someone else wasn't.
I fucking dare you to tell my mom, who almost died and lost two children, that Justin is 'just human'. I fucking dare you to tell Irene's parents that he 'made a mistake'.