Death is Freedom

Writing about my high school experiences is probably the closest I’ll ever get to achieving my dream of being a horror author.

The following story is an exposition for the point I want to make and is sponsored by Chrome Gin. I wouldn’t have had the experience I had if it wasn’t for them. (pls don’t send me PR, you guys almost killed me). A co-sponsor for this piece is the GOAT himself, Gideon. It was during our long talk on Thursday that he said, “death is freedom,” and it prompted all these thoughts.

Ok, so picture this. It was a Friday evening and, after a particularly long day that featured a lecture on how we needed to lock in as candidates after receiving some ugly math results, I wanted nothing more than to go back to the dorms and sleep. The same dorms, MIND YOU, that I had been sent to because I needed to get serious with my studies. The following events are proof that this change in residence didn’t do anything to curb my un-candidate-like behavior.

I was gathering my things and getting ready to go take a nap when a friend, who I will call Orange for the purpose of this story, suggested that we go for a polite drink at the shithole next door. I knew this script all too well and had indulged in this hooliganism enough times to know that the drinking would be everything but polite. I also knew that the guards at the school gate had become really strict and wouldn’t let a known boarder leave school premises without written permission from the boarding mistress and a parent. That second bit of knowledge was really comforting because I really didn’t want to go get shitfaced drunk, yet didn’t know how to tell Orange no. He’d bulldoze me into going out no matter what I said in protest.

So, instead of having our usual back and forth where I’d say no and he’d ignore my pleas for sobriety, I simply told him that the guards wouldn’t let me leave even if we tried. Instead of taking this as finality, he took this as a challenge. I can’t tell you how because all the ethanol eroded my memory, but he ended up getting me past the school gates and into the shithole next door.

Anyone who’s read the other pieces I’ve written about high school, or knew me during that horrific time in my life, knows about the shithole next door. It was a pub/bar that was right next to my school. I call it the shithole next door for multiple reasons. Most importantly because I don’t want to disclose its real name and have people who respect me discover the cesspool where I’d routinely abandon all my self-respect and dignity. Least importantly because that’s exactly what this place was: a shithole.

I talk about it in the past tense, not just because this was literal years ago, but because, last I heard, they’d been shut down over a land dispute. RIP to the shithole next door. Anyway, I’ve digressed.

Remember how I said the proposed plan was to indulge in some “polite drinks”? That was intentionally misleading. Drinks suggests cocktails, crafted shots, and anything else a reputable bar might have on its menu. This place didn’t even have a menu, and you might have been thrown out for requesting a single shot. What it did have was a wall of bottles that were probably all counterfeit, a single fridge for chasers and water, and a sound system that only knew reggae and dancehall.

My newly found self-respect is preventing me from painting a picture of this dungeon of debauchery, yet the writer in me wants nothing more than to take an entire paragraph to describe this place to you guys. I’ll abide by the former and only tell you guys that the floors were dirt, the tables were permanently sticky, and the clientele would make you hide your phone.

Anywayssss, I’ve digressed yet again. So we sat down and got in the same argument we always did. To get a mzinga or a quarter, that is the question. Or whatever the hell Hamlet was asking.

I always wanted to get a quarter because I somewhat valued my liver and needed to maintain its resale value. Orange, despite us being only 2 people, always wanted a mzinga. And, to my liver’s despair, Orange always got his way.

As if it couldn’t get any more hazardous, the shithole next door never had what you wanted. It was always organ-damage roulette. And, as fate would have it, they didn’t have any of our poisons of choice, so we ended up settling for Chrome Gin.

So there we were: me, Orange, and 750 milliliters of ethanol that was probably distilled in someone’s bedsitter. The counterfeit alcohol problem has always been very real, but that didn’t matter when the stories flowed just as fluidly as the drinks. We yapped and laughed from 4 p.m. to sundown. I can’t even remember the contents of our conversations, but I do remember how hard I was laughing because Orange was, and still is, the funniest person I’ve ever met.

Between the laughter and choking back that pesticide, a bad feeling told me to check my phone. It had been hidden in my bra ever since we got there. I produced it from my shirt and my screen lit up with 10+ missed calls from my fellow boarders.

My blood ran cold, and that’s saying something given how drastically Chrome Gin will increase your body temperature. I called back the last person to call me and he picked up on the first ring. There was no time for pleasantries as he went straight to telling me that I might have already been locked out of the dorms.

I panicked, and it’s like the Chrome Gin sensed this and mixed itself with the adrenaline to form the most sickening confusion. My brain was struggling to keep up with what I was hearing from the other end of the call, so it just picked out the key words.

You. Come back. Locked out. Quickly.

It was all too anxiety-inducing for my drunk self to deal with, so I just handed the phone to Orange and went to piss for the 5th time that evening. Hovering over the hole in the ground that served as the ladies’ toilet, my thoughts screamed at me. What the hell was I going to do if I was locked out of the dorms? What if we went back to school and I ran into a teacher in my heavily intoxicated state? Why the hell did I leave the school compound in the first place? Why did I always let Orange get me in these situations?

My thoughts and pissing were interrupted by banging on the stall door. I shouted back that the stall was occupied, but the banging persisted. I concluded my toilet time and swung the door open to the surly barmaid telling me that Orange was looking for me.

I staggered back to where I’d left him, and he didn’t even let me sit before telling me he’d already spoken to the boarders over the phone and knew how he’d get me back in my room. I was too drunk to question him and wayyyy too drunk to remember how I got into my room.

If this story isn’t a massive warning against excessive alcohol consumption, I don’t know what will convince you. The lapses in my memory are huge. I don’t remember how I wound up in my bed, but I do remember lying on that top bunk, staring at the plate of food that my roommate had brought me and silently cursing Orange and East African Breweries Limited.

While I was laying on that top bunk, smelling like a distillery and provoking my roommate to pray for my soul that I’d left behind in that shithole, I had a realization. I didn’t want to be this person anymore. I hated who I’d become. Not just because of the drinking, but because, when I looked at almost every facet of my life, I hated what I saw. I was slacking where it mattered most, I’d grown distant from people who genuinely loved and cared about me, and, when I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t honestly say I loved or cared about myself.

I didn’t know it then, but the reality was that death was the only thing that could save me.

There was no amount of healing or therapy speak that could undo the damage I’d done to myself in those 2 years. Key features of my personality were mutilated beyond recognition and, as such, needed to die. The point of repair had long passed, and now redemption could only be sought through death. There was no going back, only through, and that meant through fire and up from ash.

I needed to kill the part of me that so deeply needed Orange’s approval. I needed to kill the part of me that let his word be law. Most importantly, the version of myself that put others’ wants over my own needs needed to die.

I wish I could say these parts of myself died a peaceful, natural death, but if I wanted to lie I’d go over to Twitter. These things died a very instant death on a day that I don’t think I’ll ever have the strength to talk about.

It was during one of these drunken escapades with Orange that something tragic befell me, and it instantly killed a part of me. The incident that resulted in that death was a direct consequence of my own intoxicated recklessness. I stopped talking to everyone after that and poured all my thoughts into my notes app instead. My notes became, and still remain, a documentation of that death and the thoughts that came with it. Maybe one day I’ll share them. During that period, Orange’s calls went unanswered, my friends’ texts went unopened, and I basically only spoke to my family.

I needed to be alone because it was only in this death, this solitude ,that I could find peace and alignment. I needed to sit in the ash. Rebirth was self-discovery, and with that came self-respect and a sense of direction that I’d been missing for so long.

Once I knew what I wanted in life, how I wanted to be treated, and what I wasn’t willing to tolerate, the version of myself that Orange liked so much died a natural death. And with that came so much freedom. The freedom to finally say no to people. The freedom to pursue my passions. The freedom to put my wants and needs above everyone else’s after doing the opposite for so long.

I felt free for the first time in a long time and continue to feel that way to date.

I think the perfect example of this death and rebirth is how I fell back in love with swimming after I stopped hanging out with Orange. Now that I wasn’t always intoxicated or being dragged around on side quests like a pet, or reeling from the effects of being intoxicated the day before, I was free to actually get back in the water.

And I loved it.

It was during one training session where my eyes were fully opened to just how hectic my life had been before that death. I was resting between sets and thinking about how boring my life had become when I realized that I was confusing peace for boredom and that I should appreciate it rather than complain about it.

Peace had become a freedom that I could now enjoy after having been robbed of it for so long despite being entitled to it all my life.

I don’t want this piece to seem like I’m hating Orange. No. If anything, I’m grateful for the short time we spent as friends.

I’m not even hating the version of myself that was so easily manipulated by him.

This piece is me saying that death, as traumatic as it was, was necessary for me to enjoy the freedom that I now revel in.