Note: For anyone to get to Billy Hargrove's point in Stranger Things 2, there must have been a reason. This is my take at scratching the surface.
To find it, it will cost everything I have
Once upon a time, Billy's mother, Eleanor, was his idol.
Now he's convinced himself he hates her.
His mother was kind, and lovely, and a masterful teacher who coaxed with a tiny glittering smile and the right amount of daring.
His mother was afraid, and cowardly, and a ceramic statue who watched her son be beaten by her husband's large knuckles and thick belt and never said a word as the blood ran down the backs of his legs.
(Neil was particular about where he struck. The backs of the thighs were acceptable. The torso, the spine, the face, were not, as a Hargrove man had to be proud of his body. Scars in obvious places would mar the illusion.)
After, she would meet him in the bathroom on the second floor, squished between their room and his. The first aid kit rested in her lap. He wiped the blood off with a damp towel and dabbed on Neosporin and cut the plaster to match the wounds. She never attempted to help. She must have, once, to teach him all this. Must have touched him. He can't remember, the routine was in place before his memory starts.
She must have felt the guilt as least because he remembers it eating her alive in the form of a razor and one-hundred litres of tepid water.
Billy's good memories of her came from a different reality, one in which Neil did not inhabit their house. In these, she taught him to cook and sang over a bowl of cookie dough and begged him to play piano for her. Her wispy braid caught the sun in a halo of gold as she spun to Debussy and Haydn. None of the other mothers looked like her to him. He thought she was an angel, a princess, his to protect her from the dragon.
When he got older and wiser and angrier, he realised their roles should have been the reverse.
He will give her this, she had her own brand of strength. It was her silence. She did not give him platitudes, pretty lies that hurt more than they healed. He thanked her for that more than the cooking lessons. She was a realist.
Susan Mayfield, Maxine's mom, now she was truly weak. Platitudes spilled from her mouth in a fount of stupidity. When she told Billy "your father is tired from work" he decided to hate her. His mother had at least had the grace to admit, however silently, that his father was a monster.
Oh, yes, a monster. Billy is aware that most kids don't have dads like his. Most kids are also faggots who try a cigarette and think they're hardcore whereas Billy's been smoking since he was eleven and banging girls since he was twelve and learned how to seduce bored housewives when he was fourteen.
Housewives are great. They know what they like and they know how to get it and they've taught him a lot about pleasure. There's no better self-esteem booster than leaving a housewife boneless in the early hours of the morning while her husband drools on the Lay-Z Boy. A lot of them love to take his Catholic medal and twist the chain between their fingers and kiss the metal and Billy knows that wasn't what his mother intended for it. He decides not to care.
Yeah, it's twisted. The number of concussions from back-of-the-head punches have screwed something up in there. At sixteen he thought about fixing it.
Then he found her in the bath when he got home from school. His dad married Susan three months later. He got saddled with Max. Bitter, tomboy Max, who stole what little freedom he had and she was the angry one?
Neil declared that they were going to Hawkins – Susan, it had to be Susan's plan. Now his housewives, his surfing, his California, it was all being torn from his grasp and he couldn't take it any more. He snapped and some black kid got beaten within an inch of his life. There was talk of juvie. Billy was almost excited.
He doesn't know why he got his hopes up. After all, his father did the same thing near daily and no one batted an eye. Neil called in a favour with the last of his badge's powers at the Orange County Sheriff's Department. The whole thing was hushed up and next thing Billy knew, they were in Hawkins, Indiana, nowheresville.
His bright Californian sun and bikini-clad girls and his everything were all snatched away in a matter of months. What was left? His father, his Camaro, his cigarettes, himself – the hyper-confident, adrenaline-junkie, scary, strong, and suave bad boy Billy Hargrove.
He was sick of it all. One way or another, he decided, he was getting out of here.
He tried to run over Max's friends. That wouldn't be hushed up, surely. Neil wasn't on the force anymore and not even the lazy, boorish Chief Hopper would triple homicide slide.
But Max intervened and he had to try again with Steve Harrington and she intervened again.
No matter. He isn't giving up. Every moment, every breath, he will keep searching for the opportunity and when it comes, no one will be able stop him.
Billy Hargrove has learnt that you've got to free yourself, because no one will do it for you.