Paths: A Memoir
Remind myself. Re-mind myself. Reevaluate my mind.
As a child, I always wondered as to why people would wish to take drugs of any kind, for I myself hated even taking medicine, and recreational drugs just didn’t “make-sense” to my youthful self. I would see those horrible commercials designed to dissuade young-adults, and scare them onto the straight-and-narrow, but these commercials never did much in the way of making me disapprove of drugs, rather they disgusted me, scared me, and sometimes made me feel guilty just for being lumped into the same category as these “junkies.” This guilt was especially apparent when I should happen to watch them alongside my mum who would then usually turn to me and say, “You know not to do drugs, right?” I always answered yes, but as I grew older I realized that I did not know not to do drugs, but rather I had been told frequently not to do drugs, and thus I was merely spitting out the response I knew they wanted to hear.
This de facto understanding was in part due to the horrible commercials, but also, because no one had really told me why as in “how will it cause me harm.” Their reasons seemed to stem from a moral objection to the concept of drugs as a whole, rather than for any scientific or logical reason, and since I was born into this society, I had been adopted to it without much thought. Without a proper explanation behind these drugs, the only understanding that I had was based on shallow emotional responses, and was on the whole, impulsive understanding. I had beliefs without reasons. When I became old enough to recognize this underdevelopment, I began my own search for knowledge, and this inevitably resulted in me experimenting with drugs.
A First Excursion - Regrettable Losses
My first excursions with drugs started shortly after puberty began. I guess a lot of changes occur for most people, and I was no different. Aside from terrible acne which most likely has scarred my confidence for life (no pun intended), I became much more arrogant like most, but I also developed a strong anti-authoritarian stance. It is weird to think of a twelve-year-old boy standing up defiantly against a 40 year old man and claiming to be correct, despite the egregious deficit of experience in his favour, but that is what I used to do quite frequently. Such anti-authoritarian views most definitely arose from prior experiences I had had in public schools, but with this sudden influx of hormones making their rounds in my body, my emotions were firing much more strongly than had ever before. This led to what I consider now-a-days to be a transitional phase of my life, from which I learned plenty of life skills, but most these came from what I had hitherto never experienced, and that included drugs. These lessons however, were rarely learned instantly, and on the whole were delayed in suggesting their importance. Some lessons I have only recently begun to truly appreciate, and whats more, I see even more context in and around my younger sister. I hope that my experiences, may someday, be able to provide answers and guidance to her, so she won’t have to make similar mistakes. But let us continue on with the story.
I bought my first two cannabis joints from an old classmate of mine from elementary school who had gone on to a different middle school than I. The price was fair and I was excited to break the law, but once I started smoking, my old impressionist beliefs began to take hold. I began to feel guilty, and flashes of those commercials began to make their way into my conscious thoughts. Would I become a low-life junkie without anything to call my own, and no future ahead of me? Whilst I enjoyed the effects of the joint at the time, I couldn’t shake this inherent anxiety which pervaded days later, so in an attempt to clear my conscience, I tossed my second joint away and vowed I wouldn’t become a “druggie.” This fear however, was never expanded upon, nor was it ever validated, and as such it remained in need of closure. Whilst some current studies have shown negative effects of cannabis on adolescent brains; at the time, very little verible data was available to me, and as such I never fully held my conviction. This prevailing sentiment remained until high school where I would once again experience drugs.
High Thoughts on Highschool: Nostalgic Haze
Now, before I go further I want to make it clear that I did not take school for granted, and nor was I a burned-out highschool student. I excelled in most courses, science and math being my strong suits, but by no means was I mediocre in english or social studies. I also was involved in quite a few events ranging from performing in a fashion show to directing parts of our graduation video, so by no means did I lump myself into any particular group of people. I have always been a knowledge hound so I frequently found school quite slow, and felt that topics were usually just glossed over. This shallow sampling led me to frequently research various things in my spare time rather than fretting over homework or concepts taught that day in class. This led me to explore all manner of different ideas, and I always felt I was a little different from most people my age, not necessarily in my values, but in my interests. I was never much of a sport fan, and I have never been sure as to why. I enjoyed playing the sports, but never on a competitive level. I did play on our highschool rugby team for two years and whilst I loved it, I never saw it as anything more special than say chemistry or physics which elicited a similar feeling of satisfaction. I was always interested in the way people interacted between eachother, and would freqently discuss society and human nature with my close friends, and found deep philosophical questions to be much more fascinating than what I considered to be childish gossip. This did not stop me from experiencing lots that highschool offered.
As I think back, highschool was a great time which I should have acknowledged more while I was there, but alas times have long since passed and I am a different person than I once was. Now, my school was what I believe to be relatively unique, at least in my area, for it was comprised of two different schools which shared learning spaces. This gave us more room to provide accomodations to all sorts of students. We had a fine arts program, a sports program, and of course catered to your everyday student. This atmosphere was calm and very safe, this same atmosphere led to a sense of freedom which any teenager yearns for during their highschool years. This same freedom led me and my friend to once again begin smoking cannabis. We loved it, it became our little secret and every couple of days we would go to his place and smoke in his shed out back. To me it was cool, and I guess I saw it somewhat as a way of rebelling and showing the world that I could smoke weed and still be considered smart by the public school system. I did it, in a way, out a spite, but I must say I never noticed any negative effect on me when I was only smoking it every couple of days. This behaviour continued on and off and it did so all the way through highschool and beyond. I was never caught with drugs, and from what I could gather, most of my teachers felt I was a well raised lad with definite hopes for university.
Trust Intuition. Trust in Tuition?
As the final months of highschool waned, I began to consider the hunt for university, something which I had been dreading, though found mildly intriguing. The first thing I had to do though, was pick my major. I do not pretend to know what difficulties other people have gone through picking a major, but mine was one of indecision. I had no idea what degree I wanted to pursue. I knew I wanted to go on to university, why I do not know, but I had yet to decide what my intended career would be. This decision is such a life altering decision, it is a shame it comes at a time when one is so vulnerable to impulse. In the end I decided to pick engineering as my field of study, for it included both math and science, things I was good at, and a chance to apply it to real world problems. It seemed just like my thing, now onto the next stage: deciding on a school. This was both difficult and not-so-difficult at the same time, for I had a severe budget, and this limited my choices immensely. A quick comparison of the prices told me I wasn’t leaving town and was going to the university in my city. It wasn’t a bad university, and in fact had a school of engineering. It also meant I wouldn’t have to relocate or pay rent. Such inevitability was quite disheartening to say the least for I had such a desire to go to university and achieve higher learning, but financial difficulties prevented me from going to the one of my choice. This wouldn’t stop me however, and in the fall after I graduated highschool, I was headed to university.
University was great in so many ways, and I must say that the first year holds the best memories by far. I attribute this to the magnificence of novelty, and its effect on my perception of the past. Anyone who thinks back knows the “glassy” feeling of nostalgia that pervades, but I digress. I had been told prior to university that it would be a “much different place” and that the “professors would'nt care” and that the workload would be intense, but as similar things had been said to me about middle school, and highschool, I took them with a grain a salt (or perhaps the whole shaker). This belief was then strengthened as I was able to cruise through classes with my previous lackluster effort affording me fruit. The first year wasn’t much more difficult than highschool and I maintained A’s and B’s across the board, but it was the freedom that was truly noticed. No one to care if I slept in class, was late, missed a lecture, or jumped into someone else’s course. Like most I took the opportunity to enjoy this luxury. I met lots of people, joined some clubs, and really began to feel like a college kid. Drinking and partying followed, with a few altercations, but by-and-large it was a great time. I felt like I had the perfect level of work and play figured out. Due to this cocksure feeling, I did not take the time to develop my study habits or practice note taking as the workload was not yet that challenging. This would set me up for failure later in my schooling experience as I was to find out.
Second Year: Second Chance
The school year ended, and I took no spring or summer courses as I was glad to have the time off. Upon reflection, I really should have taken a summer course or spring course as I was hard pressed to find work which resulted in a lack of funds. This led me to spend much of my time bored and alone that summer as I couldn’t afford to do many things, and my schedule clashed with most of my compatriots. Finally, however, fall was here and school could start again. As most students do, I had a “plan” for my second year. I would have strict schedules, study times, planned events, you name it, I probably had written down every false promise that could be directed towards school. Of course, like all false promises, I quickly forgot about them and resumed my routine sans effort. This original routine was working fine at first. I was exercising, partying, going to class, and I had even found a girl to pursue whom I found seductively attractive. Things seemed to be going well, but then second semester came.
First, I ended up becoming permanantly banned from the undergrad campus bar. This meant that my most popular place to go and drink with friends was no longer available to me. I won’t bore you with details as to how it happened, but suffice it to say that I was wrongly accused in my friend’s stead and my only mistake was not respecting the bar staff’s authority to blame me. While I do not agree with the bar’s manager, nor with the entire proceedings, I did my best to adjust to the change which was not easy. The first reason for the difficulty was in part due to my membership in one of the fraternities on campus and each monday all the greek groups would meet at the bar after our weekly meetings. This was one of my favourite traditions from first year, and to have it taken away from me when I was not at fault was very crushing. My social life took quite a turn as most of my inter-greek mingling came over or from these monday gatherings, and to lose it felt like being removed from the machine. While we did frequent other bars and the like, the most common and easiest place to go was the campus bar, and when they decided to go there, I of course, could not join in. This led me to find some different ways to fill my time.
One big step for me…
Around the same time that I was banned from the bar, I was also beginning to refind my love of cannabis once more. I bought a ¼ oz. off of one of my friends at the time, and for the first time in my life I was purchasing my own weed. Now I know what you are thinking, I purchased weed in the past didn’t I? Yes, and no. I did buy weed, but I always “pitched” with a friend, or in the case of my first two joints: it was only two joints. This was a ¼ oz. and I was not just “pitching” with some friends. I ended up smoking quite freqently at the fraternity house and through weed I bonded a bit closer with some of the brothers who lived there. It began to become quite a routine for me to pop by after class and enjoy a few tokes with friends. This habit began to open up my network to all sorts of people. I began to meet people who didn’t just smoke weed, but did shrooms, MDMA, and even cocaine. I met girls who would “pop some molly” and go to the clubs to dance, and soon I was refinding a new way party.
Now upto this point I had been living with my mum and sister as I had always, but I was beginning to look around and see changes on the horizon of my life. All of my oldest and closest friends of the time we in relationships with other people, and everywhere I looked I continued to see couples and love and sex. This began to frighten me as I have a terrible track record when it comes to relationships. I have never been a “looker,” and I had yet to have any sort of meaningful encounters with girls and I had never had a “girlfriend” either. I was never interested in the ones who showed interest in me, and I had always found my sights were set too high. This culminated in frequent disappointment as far as relationships could be concerned, and with such prior history, my futures looked bleak. I did not understand girls(I still don’t), and everyone around me had someone close to them, but I had no one. The girl who I have mentioned above continued the trend, but worst off this time because she was worried I would be clingy, as I had yet not been with a girl. Not because she wasn’t attracted to me. This Catch-22 of my life was sickening, and I could see no way around it. I didn’t want to go after just “any” girl, and I didn’t want dirty meaningless sex either, I wanted a girl who I understood, and one who understood me. This was not an option for me at the time, and I was still reeling with some heartbreak over the last girl.
So a girl was not a readily available solution to my problem, but the fear and anxiety around this problem began to grow. I saw my whole life being torn apart like paper. My friends would move out with their partners, they would find a home, possibly get married, have kids, and leave me behind: a lone strip of lonely paper. I blame all those movies and television shows which show married couples becoming distant from their single friends, and changing their lifestyles accordingly. This fear pervaded my every fiber of being, and I couldn’t shake it from my thoughts. I didn’t want to lose my friends, especially not because of my poor flirtation and social skills. I needed a plan, but now I fear, all I did was find an escape.
At the same time I was fretting over the fear of losing my friends, I had also just been caught smoking weed by my mum. I don’t know if I will ever forget that moment. I had frequently discussed broaching my drug-use with my mum with friends, and I had somewhat convinced myself that she would see eye-to-eye with me, and that it would be no big deal, but sadly that wasn’t the case. She was terse and concise. I wasn’t to smoke weed at my house, she didn’t care what I did at my friend’s but she wouldn’t have drugs in the house with my sister around. She said it in what must have been less than a minute or two whilst my sister was in another part of the house. I could hardly respond and just uttered a stuttered “okay” and quickly hid myself in my room. The next three days were hell in my house. My mum did not say a single word to me. She didn’t inform me when dinner was ready, she didn’t say goodnight, didn’t say hello or goodbye, and didn’t make any small talk. Now, I don’t pretend to know other families, but in my family, we always got on well. No fight ever persisted beyond a day, and we frequently did family events beyond any scale I have seen in other families, so such a change was despairing to say the least. I felt like an outsider in my home, I felt nervous to go home, and I was shamed and guilt-ridden. I wanted to explain, but I couldn’t see how, so instead I ran away from the problem. I was going to move out.
I don’t know why I moved out. I think it was the compounded anxiety from my friends’ love lives, and the jarring conflict I had recently had with my mum. There were other reasons as well. We were not well off, and my house was too small for all three of us to live. My sister was sharing my mum’s room because I had the other bedroom. I knew this wasn’t right, and I felt I should give up my space so that my sister could have a proper space of her own. I felt anxious and guilty and all these negative thoughts compiled into my decision to move into the fraternity house. I remember the dinner when I broached the subject. I did it the same way I declared I was going into engineering, and every other decision I had made. I always made up my mind before voicing my opinions, and this was no different. I had figured out the costs, the living expenses, the plan for food, and all the other things that come from it, including moving. When I was finished, my sister started crying and begged me to stay, she didn’t want me going away. This display of emotions, unloaded mine, and all I can remember was bawling into my mum’s shoulder with my sister crying into mine. I didn’t want to leave, but I felt no other options, and despite the drama, I was still resolute in my plan. Two weeks before my twentieth birthday I moved into my new residence.
Home on the Range.
The first night I slept in my new room, everything felt fine. Nothing felt different, nothing new, nothing strange, just fine. I wonder if it was some sort of mild shock, but I didn’t have any sort of homesickness, or anything of the like. Living on your own is a weird feeling. You are sure you have thought about all the contingencies and that ilk, but something will always come up which suddenly makes you aware of all you took for granted while living at home. For me, this was the time it took to actually perform the required chores in reality as opposed to them in theory. Cleaning suddenly wasn’t as easy as grabbing a cloth, or paper towel, I didn’t have any at first. I suddenly needed to manage not just cooking and eating times, but prep time, and of course shopping time. It wasn’t the big things that throw you off when you start out on your own, no it is the small things. Over the course of the next 4 months (summer) I had gleaned so much “wisdom” I couldn’t be considered the same person. I felt contempt for all those who still lived with their parents and didn’t respect all that they did for them. Every day I come across something I wasn’t nerely grateful enough for as a kid, but alas if we have no room to grow, what point of life is there? I prefer now to try and see living at home as a gift to those who still have it, and it is my role to help guide through my advice rather than through contempt.
The responsibilities however, did not arrive without reason, but rather they arrived alongside my extended freedom. Responsibility comes with freedom. You cannot have one without the other, for they contrast and provide a stable system to work within. Freedom means not without responsibility to give it worth, and the same goes vice-versa. If I want freedom then I must be in a position to elicit it, but with freedom comes the need for self-sufficiency, and with self-sufficiency, demands. These demands came in the form of bills, and costs, and obligations I had made. My life was suddenly very much in my hands, and because of this freedom and control, I was also wholly responsible for my own failure. This I had not expected. I don’t know if one truly can “know” what lies ahead for them until they experience it themselves. I was never caught completely offguard by situations, but rather I was surprised at my prior ignorance in these situations for they had just never occured to me in such fashions. But, after some mild trials and tribulations throughout the summer, I felt at the time going into my third year, that I was making some progress in life. I was taking control, and I was accepting responsibility, but alas we cannot always control the world around us. This random nature, mixed with inertial tendencies in our understanding would lead me down a road I couldn’t have foreseen.