The thing is, I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I have been married for nearly ten years, together since 2004 or 2005 (it was a bit of a blur). Then in January 2021 I discovered firm evidence of infidelity. This kinda sucked. A whole fucking shit tonne if I am perfectly honest. When confronted with this evidence, my wife (I have no idea what to refer to her as: ex / estranged. Who fucking knows? I sure as shit do not) kindly explained to me that her action of betrayal was in large part my fault. I am a difficult man, to put it lightly. Fair enough. I own my problems.
However, having gained distance from her through moving to a new city and leaving her and our four dogs (whom I miss tremendously, both her and the dogs, but mostly the dogs), I have been inspecting myself and interrogating who I am. This is what these writings are for, an open and honest engagement with self to discover self and to heal self. I want to be healthy inside and out. I want to be positive and good. These things are far from easy. In fact, it is possibly the hardest thing I have ever done.
In so doing, I have stopped smoking cannabis. Again, one of the hardest things I have done. But, my great fear now is that I am merely replacing one vice with two: alcohol and tobacco. As such I guess now is as good a time as any to get into my relationship with Mary Jane.
We First met when I was 14 or 15. Again, a bit of a blur.
I was / am a massive nerd. And I was a nerd before it was cool. Seriously. Johannesburg in the 90's was not the place for nerddom. There were no comicons, no gatherings of like minded nerds, no acceptance and despite recently getting over a fairly intolerant legal system, there was very little tolerance of "other". We were social pariahs and outcasts. Add to that the fact that I was a fairly chunky youngster, a kid who had lived in England, so I sounded different and then there is my name: Garrick. It is an odd name. In Johannesburg odd and different made you a target for bullying. And bullied I was . It was not the most fun. One such example that still sticks with me was the transformation of my name: "Gay Rick is a brain dead blowfish." Yes, very witty and intelligent burn. I was fat, and acted stupid to try to fit in as a stranger trying simply to make friends. That is all I ever wanted. To fit in.
This lead me to Dungeons and Dragons. Fantasy novels. Video games. Escapism. Good times if I am honest. I loved DnD. It was a world I could escape into where I defined myself. A dark and brooding mercenary who always fought for the good guys who were too weak to fight for themselves. Totally not an expression of my own situation. Not. At. All. The problem being the fact that my family is deeply religious. An Irish Catholic family with strong roots and connections to the Catholic church. Now, in the mid 90's the Satanic Panic that started in the 80's in the USA came late to South Africa. Much like a lot of things because of the political, social and cultural isolation of South Africa because of this thing, I don't know if you've heard of it, called Apartheid.
I remember quite distinctly, my father coming home from one of his church meetings in which he had discovered how DnD was a gateway to Satan worship. This sounds pretty cool. In reality, DnD was just a group of losers that gathered at one or the other's home over the weekend to escape the reality of being losers. Rolling dice and pretending they were something they weren't. I loved it. But then it was banned. And when things were banned in my house, it meant a complete and utter banning, no half measures in my family.
This did not make me happy. I was an obedient young man at that point so I fully intended to listen to my father.
However, that first weekend, I went to my friend's home to tell the group I could no longer play DnD with them. They didn't really care much. That was in large part due to the fact that one of them had been given some of this green stuff called "weed" by a friend at his school. I think this must have been my first year of high school. I remember the night quite clearly. We had no idea what we were doing. I think we rolled our first joint in Mad Money (from the board game). We smoked it as best as we could. We made pizzas. I think. It all gets a bit hazy after that.
And then we played DnD stoned. Well, we tried to at least. This was my first act of disobedience and more would follow after this point and after this joint.
I instantly fell in love with Mary Jane. She offered me the best form of escape. With Mary Jane in my life, the name calling, the bullying, the occasional beatings could all easily be escaped with a puff or two of that wonderful stuff.
Everything in my life took a very significant second place to her. As a result, shortly after this point my entire life revolved around her. I started smoking every single day from the age of 16 to 40, with only perhaps a month or two in between without.
Here is the problem with making a substance illegal: when you want to buy alcohol for example, the shop only sells alcohol, when you want to buy an illegal substance, the dealer is likely to sell more than one. And this was certainly true in the case of cannabis in Johannesburg. So at 16, I very quickly went from cannabis to other substances. For the purpose of this entry I will not go into specifics. These may be raised at a later time. Within a year, I had experienced the loss of my first of many friends due to this very rapid escalation of drug use.
Mary Jane took me from DnD, to a variety of different substances, then after many years of blurred stupidity, she take me off of those other substances, she even introduced me to the woman who would later become my wife (or whatever definition is suitable given the current state of... affairs).
From the age of 16-40 Mary Jane was my everything. So, in order to be objective, it wasn't my wife that had the first extra marital affair. It was me and Mary Jane.
Now for the conclusion. I have ended my relationship with her after all these years. She still lives on the periphery and certain new people in my life are in a committed relationship with her and we still bump into each other from time to time. Despite this, she is not in my bed, in my thoughts and motivator to my actions. She is just someone that happens to be there. Again, quitting her has been one of the hardest things I have done, and I have quit quite a few things more addictive than her.
Then there is alcohol and tobacco. I am finding them even more difficult to leave behind for the sake of my health, both mental and physical. They are both ubiquitous with socializing. You cannot go out and meet people without the two of them being there. And for a person who has such an addictive personality as mine, that is problematic to say the very least. I need to leave them both behind in order to take me that little bit further down the path away from depression and towards awesomeness instead.
I just don't know how to be sober. I don't know how to not want to escape reality into a world of make believe. I do not know how to confront the reality of all of the awful blurred memory mistakes I have made that have lead me to this place, here and now, where I find myself. Nonetheless, nothing will stop me from trying.
For one simple fact: I will never stop trying to not be shit and striving to be awesome instead.
