Lost

I don’t know if it is the many problems I faced that caused me to drink or what I drank that caused my life. Whatever the case, I find myself in a loop that pulls me back each time I try to escape. About ten years ago, my company was the most booming enterprise in the small town I lived in. I helped households and businesses with loans. My siblings depended on my job for funds for their education. At that time, I had a young but happy family. Everything was ok until the tables decided to turn around one day. My life changed completely with no residues of the past. My company collapsed, my children had to move to a school where they paid less fees. It was my wife’s trading business that we depended on for a living. As time passed by, things became critical. My relatives abandoned us from the family house we lived in so we moved to Accra to seek greener pastures. In Accra, I began working as a laborer: I weeded, mowed and sprayed for money. My wife continued trading but in second hand clothes, even so, things became tougher for us. The friend who we stayed with had to ask us to leave because she had to sell the house and relocate. We hired a kiosk in which we lived for the time being. A time came when we couldn’t afford the rent too. But we were lucky to get an uncompleted building to make our home.

Things got worse. Every day, my children being sent home for school fees, starving for days, creditors chasing after my wife for repayment of loans, my children performing poorly in school because they had to spend the entire night selling pure water in the streets, were situations that made me lose myself. What I lost myself to however, is what destroyed me and it was drinking. Whatever money I got, I spent on drinking. The pain of my loss was too much to bear. I could no more face reality. Drinking did not get rid of the pain. It aggravated it. I behaved no less than a mad person when I got drunk. I disturbed my neighbors, disgraced my children in school. I beat my wife, I beat my children. I put the house in chaos: throwing relevant things away, spoiling food, throwing money away, to the extent of nearly raping my oldest child.

All these I did and continue to do, even now. Not because I want to, because they cause more pain. When I drink, I shy away from the reality, but for only one minute moment. With all the misfortune, I feel destroyed and broken to face the world. I try to get out of it sometimes, but the more I try, the more I get lost in it. I am helpless.