I have a bone to pick with whoever thought me writing this and having it done succinctly was possible and a good idea, but here goes! It's time to throw a spotlight on a man who would rather not be in the spotlight any more,
Chris Becker-Reid. A New Yorker born and bred, Chris has traveled a lot, but always seems to find his way back to the city, regardless of how much he would rather not be there. They say doctors' families die young, so of course the son of a policeman was a trouble maker and a rebel, delving into all the darker sides of life. Running with some questionable people, he fell into a life of drugs and was kicked out of home by seventeen.
A lucky break saw him taken into a musical program that took him to Paris. Music was an interest and he took the opportunity. It was there that he met Esme, the woman who would be his first wife. Now there were two of them with spiraling drug addicts, a baby on the way, and a relationship doomed to fail. Some time after the baby was born, Chris ran, finding himself back in New York. It was there that he met Ivan Reid, a new music producer with a need to harness Chris' talents if only Chris would let him. At the time it was not to be. The next years that followed saw Chris living in different places across America, watching as his drug habits continued, and loved ones continued to fall around him. Both children with Esme gone, as well as Esme herself eventually. Elsie, his young fiance, supposedly dead, leaving him with a tiny infant.
For a hot minute, his musical career flourished, a hit album written in the middle of pain. Ivan blinked in and out of his life as well, that relationship building into something that both men struggled to name. The love that developed was tumultuous, passionate and somewhat addictive, and mutual need saw them married. But that relationship was not remotely easy, made harder when Chris' young son, Jackson, went missing. The marriage fractured as no word came, to the point where Chris called for a marriage separation and left town to avoid the memories and the grief that were eating him alive. Years sober, his drug habit resurfaced, just in time for the news to come through that Jackson was found dead.
Another person dead in a list too long for one person to bear, on a heart already too strained by a hard life. Is it possible to forgive, to survive? One thing's for sure, it's going to be a hard, emotional ride. Congrats Kirsten (
Machiavellian) on Chris and Character Spotlight of the Month!