This reminded me of my own experience. Bear with me as this is a story from long ago, and I was not sober for it.
This is the story of Alice: Biker, Drinker, Badass.
Drinking at the bar with a friend, we went out to have a smoke and started chatting with this cool older lady. It was the type of conversation you have when everyone involved is in a good mood and at least a little drunk: lots of shouting and laughing (and coughing; we were smoking 2 things!)
We were drinking heavily and trading funny stories. Out of nowhere, this lady starts talking about how she "took care of" her first husband. He taught her how to ride and fix motorcycles, but he was a violent alcoholic. One day she'd had enough and found the perfect opportunity. He drunkenly passed out near a river, so she threw him in and held him down until he stopped moving. She then set it up to look like he got trashed and rode his motorcycle into the water, which apparently looked convincingly like he just was too far gone to save himself. This lady, for real, probably did this. I have a decent enough bullshit detector, and nothing was setting off any alarms.
Just because this lady deserves to have her legend remembered, a couple more quick tidbits. On another occasion, she told me in front of my wife that she wanted to sit on my face. On yet another occasion, she shouted "hey boys!" at me and a few friends while we were ordering at the bar, and when we all turned to look, she flashed us and just started cackling.
Seriously, she cackled so joyfully after each one of these anecdotes. What a fucking badass. Ride on, Alice!
[For reference, all of these happened probably 10 to 12 years ago. That lady was old enough, and partied hard enough, that I highly doubt she's still with us.
I'm not advocating for or condoning murder, by the way. It's just that I believe this woman's account, and that she lived in a hard time and place. I don't know if it's really true, and I don't know if she had other options.]
You probably know it way better than the average American. I say this not only as an American, but as one who has been outside North America. I find that our own perspective on us is pretty skewed, and it takes a lot of work to set it straight. More than most of us are willing to do.