Growing up it was so important to have a good social network. I needed to surround myself with other people. I had this network when I lived in Bendigo. I had developed a good group of friends and my life revolved around spending both my time in school and outside school hours with them. I didn’t want to be ‘cool’ or a jock, I just socialised with the students who wagged school, smoked pot and cigarettes and who listened to Nirvana. Every week we would spend weekends and holidays at my best mates who didn’t have a father that was constantly on our backs. He was a unique character who I really liked. He was an artist too.
I prioritised all of these shenanigans above my school work which I was failing miserably (The story of my life) I attended class but paid zero attention to what was being taught and I flunked every class. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the ability to do the work, I just hated every element of school. Art and ceramic classes were the exception. I couldn’t wait for the lunch time bell or even better the home time bell. A lot of these didn’t mean I was excused from class as I often had detention and I was allocated special classes to catch up with the rest of the classes.
Anyway, this was a good period of life as far as my socialising went but then I made the mistake of moving schools to Frankston. I had all of these ideas like I was going to develop a network of new friends, spend my time at the beach and fir into the social situation. Once again I would be popular with friends. That was the dream anyways. Click here to visit my blog on this. After making friends with people who weren’t my friends, they were just better to mingle with than spending my days by myself. These guys were definitely not my people.
After I left school during the first semester I went to art school in the city. Nothing but fond memories over this stage of my life. A full blog on this can be found here.
After my schooling I made friends with people in my place of work which was Coles. I really bonded with some of these people, all older than me and who had cars. Looking back now 25 years later, they were just children themselves but I respected my elders. Unfortunately these people were the smokers of the green stuff, did pills and that just sent me further down the rabbit hole. These relationships fell apart and for good reason. One of the charactors was someone I was best mates with. We even went to Bali together. It turns out I sold my car and put the cash in my wallet only to leave it in this guys car. I rang him as soon as he had dropped me off home and he told me there was no wallet to be found. BS! That was the end of that relationship. I quit work because of my illness soon after so I no longer had to see him. While I was away my manager from Coles visited my parents concerned I was going to off myself because of a message I left to the dick who stole my money. It stated he was a good friend and i was ending it… meaning the relationship. I wasn’t suicidal at that point in time. This was another blow.
My other ‘mate’ tried sexually ausalting me on a camping trip. He figured he could do this by dosing me with LSD. I fought back and to make an extremely long story short all I will say is we both ended up in the Bairnsdale cop shop. Being interrogated while tripping on this drug was less that enjoyable. I’ll have to do a full entry on this as it was quite the story. One that messed me up mentally for a long time. It has only been later years I have come to peace with the ordeal and I forgive him. That’s what Christians do isn’t it?
I had a falling out with my cousin who I always considered to be my best friend. I don’t blame her for this at all. I used to be a drunk and knowing she was up to a drink I would go over and completely over indulge every time I saw her, and her husband who I was good mates with too.
This all happened in the same month! My world came crashing down. Once again I was by myself. After some time passed I discovered I didn’t need these people. There were more broken relationships over the years than these examples. They were mostly friendships based around drinking and smoking. I don’t need them and a lot of these friendships I sabotaged as I didn’t want to be out on the piss doing bar to bar until the sun came up ever again.
I learnt to do my drinking by myself. This sounds sad but it worked fine for me. I wouldn’t find myself in these predicaments with others and I was able to get my art done or web design as part of my business. At the time I had a extended family who I would enjoy few beers with but for the most part it was done at home all by my lonesome.
I’m happy to say I am now a nondrinker. I’m about to reach my six month anniversary and there is no going back. The above things were just life lessons and I cringe when I think of what I used to get up to. Thanks for reading!