Previous: My decline and rebirth: Part 1
Have you ever had a wondrous crowd around you? Admire them? Want to be like them? Yet when the shit truly hits the fan they scarper for the hills? It’s a well known story cried foul by adults in the thousands. A human trait, one that many have experienced.
I’m going to tell you my tale.
As a young man fresh out of college it was that time again. For life to kick me in between the eyes and to decide what one wants to do with his life. I was never one for knowing what I wanted to achieve never mind having a clear direction. I had completed my first year of college and had planned to do a second, but the prospect of spending another year doing a foundation degree in a subject I wasn’t interested in and was only doing it to please my dad and to keep off the streets, wasn’t one that I had relished.
Truth is I had never planned to go down that route. My dad was an electrician, and, by strange design he had went to college with my lecturer in charge. Which left my dad constantly checking up on me. But make no mistake, this wasn’t because he was generally interested, it was so he could stretch that long arm of control further than it already was. My dad would grip tight onto things until they broke. Negative control. I hated it.
And in an even stranger twist of fate not long after leaving college I went to live with my dad to work with him. For me, if I’m honest it was the easier option. I wasn’t one for focusing hard on the things that I’ve wanted from life. I always took the easy route. And I settled in, working with my father in his own business within a trade I could see myself doing.
It didn’t last long though; in the end he couldn’t afford to have me there. I had lied about my term of unemployment and the powers that be wouldn’t accept me on any youth provisional program, and he let me go. Great role model, huh?
This is where it all changed, though.
As a young man in a new community I took the time to get to know people, put myself around a bit. And by that I mean I was able to socialise and exchange friendlies with people of my own age group. It’s always easier to start fresh as a young man. It wasn’t long before I had another job and I was larging it up in the pub, nightclubs and wherever else I could get my hands on. I look back at my early 20’s with some really fond memories, I think most people do.
People would stop me in the street to have a conversation that I barely knew, I was strangely popular in my social circles, and I was healthy, physically. It went to my head. I went from a kid that was trying to fit in with the bad kids to being a socialite and someone that was looked up at by the community at large. Popularity, I had never experienced it before, and I didn’t want to let go of it.
I had a friend phone list as long as my arm, people that would pop in for a visit to share a beer, and awesome friends that would call me up if something interesting was happening. We had it all back then, and we didn’t miss a trick. There was one day we spent the night in a Millionaires mansion in the country. His kid we were with, I was typically not the sort of bloke you would find them hanging out with but we shared a few beers amongst friends and back for a few more we went.
We were the kings of our own destiny, we had it all, we had everything at our fingertips.
…and we fucked it all up. Say that in Joe Pesci’s voice.
“We fucked it all up.”
I was the first to go down the pan. If I’m totally honest I was like a mediator between my two closest friends, and sometimes, they weren’t the nicest of people to each other. I’ve never been one for competition, I’ve always wanted people to socialise. I harboured more than one secret from both of them about each other, and that took its toll on my mentality. Not to mention my drinking habit had become a serious issue, all whilst trying to uphold a positive image in the community…
..aaand I ended up in hospital. For two weeks. Psychiatric hospital. In truth I was there to dry out, but I was chauffeured in by the Police dribbling all over myself. It wasn’t a pretty sight. One that I don’t like to recall at length. But I went through a massive substance abuse psychosis. What they called it anyway. It was an experience in hospital. I’ll write about it another day, that’s a story on its own.
After I was discharged I was thrown back into the community at large, and, a society that wasn’t ready for recognising mental illness or hardship of any kind. I began by telling my friends my stories, the night that I went crazy. It was a story of fear, petrification, strangeness and betrayal. My friends, didn’t know where to look. I was given the index finger in a circular motion to the ear, meaning I was loopy.
My friends began to dwindle, people didn’t really see me as a pillar of inspiration and joy anymore. I think I was viewed as an older has been, a whack job nut bar that had one too many drinks that sent him off his rocker. It wasn’t long before the community began to point and laugh at me. It was acceptable to do that back then. We were on the cusp of the dark ages of brain science, the storm was nearly over but I still had many years to wait until it was widely accepted.
I was quickly learning that I was becoming a joke to the community, some people had already started to call me the village idiot, and that was particularly harsh for me, as back then I always cared what people thought. It was like a sinking feeling, one that I knew all too well, the hint of isolation that came with trying your hardest for acceptance into something that wasn’t ready to be accepted.
My two good friends eventually dwindled down to one. And not because of what I did, but because he was too concerned with his image. I felt a failure. It was nauseating to find myself back to square one again, and in a worse situation. This was a community that laughed at me, not just a couple of kids.
I moved back with my Mum.
And the friend that stayed with me is still a friend today. Bless him!
Part 3 tomorrow :D
