I wake up. Unsure of where I am and how I got there, all I know is that my head hurts and I feel nauseous. I get out of the huge bed and head straight for the bathroom where I vomit all of last night and it smells like alcohol and bad decisions. So that explains the headache and the nausea I think to myself. Flashbacks of what happened the night before appear and vanish within seconds, before I can make sense of them. I find my clothes and belongings scattered around the floor like in a treasure hunt, and head for the nearest door to get out of this strange place. It was a night that I won’t remember with people I won’t forget. This is what I tell myself to reassure myself that the life I lead is an exciting one. It’s full of drugs, sex and magic. It’s just a reminder to myself that I have lived. This is me. I enter and go as I please and leave broken hearts in the process. I don’t think of the consequences. Why should I? This is who I am .
The weird thing is I was never like this when I was younger, in fact I was probably the shiest person you’d ever meet. I only spoke when spoken too and never had many friends. It was only in Grade 9 that I met my best friends Hope and Faith. Hope Meyers came from a wealthy family from Johannesburg, they own a chain of very successful supermarkets across the country. Faith Makobalo came from the Eastern Cape, she was one of the most outgoing peple I had ever met and had the most beautiful smile. She was so beautiful it almost made our eyes sore from the glare of her perfection. You couldn’t ignore her, she wouldn’t let you.
Even though I had found my friends that year I could feel that this year would be a horrible one, and it was. See the thing about grade 9 is that this is the time when people discover other ways of coping with problems through the means of alcohol and drugs.
I like to joke and say that my first boyfriend was Dagga. He was a handsome one and told me it was okay to slow down for a minute and take things easy. He convinced me that the tasks and homework I had for the following day were not important and we should rather spend some quality alone time. We had a blast and did nothing but watch movies and hold hands. He introduced me to his friends Cocaine and Heroin. We became a closely knit family. Dagga and I eventually broke up but we kept in touch from time to time, Cocaine and I started talking more and realized we had a lot in common and he was the one who showed me that life could be exciting, living in the fast lane. He was taking away more than just my fears and doubts. No, Cocaine took it all.
My youth, skin and possessions. I stuck with Cocaine for a while but eventually realized I wasn’t the only “special” friend he had. Soon I realized that he had taken things from Hope and Faith as well. Hope’s wealth helped her keep up the habit and her generosity was much appreciated. Faith had lost her beauty and had resorted to sell herself for more alone time with Cocaine. Her smile only appeared when she had Cocaine around. It was at that time that I realized that if Cocaine could have more than one special friend so could I. Me and Heroin would have one night’s stands occasionally. But after I left that strange house I realized that I couldn’t risk my visits to be my last.
Once I reached my home that afternoon, I called Hope to find out more about the night before. I sat in the bath tub hoping to hear Hope tell me about all the hilariously stupid things we had done the night before. Unfortunately I wasn’t greeted by her usual cheery voice. Instead she was sobbing. After 5 minutes of trying to calm her down she managed to whimper “Faith is dead, she’s gone.”
All that prostitution and sharing of needles finally got to her. Who knew that it could come to this? Who thought that a little fun could hurt somebody? Faith’s death made me question my own mortality. It made me question who I was and whether it would be me or Hope getting the next dreaded phone call informing us of the other’s passing. This is me? This is my life? I’ve wasted my entire being trying to find joy and purpose through powders and white smoke? I looked back at who I was and who I was becoming and questioned whether it was what I wanted for myself.
Although I couldn’t find out at that moment who I was, I knew I was an addict, but I also knew there was hope. I found myself many years later asking other people who they were. Most of them answered with their names and their occupation. I knew that just like me, a lot of the people in those rooms didn’t know the answer to that question either. They knew that they couldn’t for sure tell you who they were because they were once another person. We cannot truly define who we are because we are forever changing and evolving. What we can do is accept who we are now and try to better ourselves and evolve into something of an improved and updated version.