The Million-Rand Teaspoon
Page 22
The loss of autonomy has been very difficult. I am not only blind. I’ve had to struggle for eight long years to regain much of my brain function. Something as simple as dialling a telephone number … well, I guess it is hard to believe that it has taken eight years to only begin to be able to do that again. So how do I live on my own? How might I be employed? At thirty-five years old, I am utterly dependent on my family. They are a comfort. They have never deserted me, even when I deserted them, and myself. Yet there has to be more than this.
It may sound as if I am crying over spilt milk, but I know that I have no one else to blame but myself. Since my overdose, I have, for the first time in my life, had to take responsibility for my actions, and I have had to face my own contribution to my downfall. I need now to make an equal contribution to making amends. Guilt is a heavy thing to live with, and my life must have a purpose. I want a chance now.
The physical damage that I have inflicted on myself turned out to be the only thing that finally forced me to want a chance. I was unable to make the choice to change, so I guess I had to be coerced by fate into making it. Now I am unable to make the choice not to move forward. Choice has been taken out of my hands because I didn’t know how to use it.
The initial prognosis was so bad after my overdose. I have beaten the odds, and there has to be a reason for that. If good can be borne out of what I have done, then there is light at the end of the tunnel. Life can be so rich and interesting. There is a world out there I can access. That I must access. There is a universe of possibilities – and this is something I have only been able to see since I stopped taking drugs completely.
I can’t see, but perhaps that is part of the process. Being able to see the outside world might distract me from exploring what can be seen within, in that inner world that holds all the answers – if we only ask the right questions.
If I hadn’t gone blind I would probably be dead. As it is, I am being healed all the time in little ways, beginning with the realisation or consideration of the possibility that my overdose and subsequent blindness could be a gift if it can serve to warn and help others.
The core of my message is that I could be anyone’s son or brother. I could be one of your friends, or one of your child’s friends. I could be you. You could be me. I know that there are so many others out there who are, or are about to be, as out of control as I was. There are other family members out there who are being harmed, and who may not be able to understand the psychology of addiction – the desperation and powerlessness that the addict feels, and the insidious blankness that can grow inside an addict’s mind.
If you are a teenager, or older, reading this – someone who is experimenting, or who uses casually, the odd joint here or there, the odd line or E on weekends, you are no doubt disassociating yourself from me. What have I to do with you? Probably very little for many of you, but not for all of you. I started off that way too, and so did many others who share with me a lifetime of consequences.
My message is that drugs are a Ouija board. A bit of fun that no one really believes will unleash a demon. A bit of fun that probably won’t impact on your life too much, if at all. A laugh. Possibly true. Except for some.
I once thought that I had all the answers. Well, I didn’t, and you could be another me. If you are susceptible to addiction, it will take you down if you open that door. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, or think you are. Of course some drugs are more dangerous than others – ones that are unarguably physically addictive, like the opiates. For some of you the lure will be cast, and you may find it irresistible to bite. If you do, well, what makes you think that you are so special that it won’t render your life a tragic, wretched mess?
It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was just a school kid smoking my first joint in the schoolyard, looking for a little kick, and thinking, ‘This is not too bad, this is something I can control and stop if I want to.’ But that’s not the way it turned out for me. In the end, no matter what I did, no matter where I went, my addiction stayed with me.
Perhaps if I had realised at an early age where I was likely to end up – if I had been informed enough or in some way better equipped to accurately assess my personality type – I could have escaped.
Perhaps if I had had enough sense to see beyond the next high, when I was still able to, I would not be where I am now.
Perhaps, perhaps. It’s too late now for that kind of thinking.
From Joe Average school kid to this. It is poles apart, and sometimes, as much as I try to think of the future, as much as I recognise how lucky I am to be alive, to be able to walk, talk and think, I am overwhelmed with regret. It’s a real shame.
It’s a shame I can’t read my own story, but at least I could tell some of it.
Postscript
Paul attended only two terms at the school in Worcester. Despite initial hopes, it quickly became evident that he would not master the computer keyboard, and further that he would be unable to gain sufficient credits to pass. Val and Mark took him home to Plett, and from there once again sent him to the John Palmer Hostel in Durban to give them time to investigate other avenues for a longer-term solution. This they believe they have now found.
Since March 2006 Paul has been resident at the Horizon Farm Trust in Natal – a welfare organisation that caters for people unable to hold their own in society – from mentally handicapped school-leavers to disabled children.
As a ‘villager’ there, Paul is involved in a number of activities, which include growing vegetables and looking after farm animals as part of the organisation’s animal-care-assisted therapy programme.
His eyesight is somewhat improved. He can now see the primary colours – red, blue and green. He is also able to see movement up to a distance of several metres, but still no detail. He is ever more articulate, and an avid listener to news, music and sport.
He cannot write or sign his name, but he is optimistic … as always.
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Also published by Zebra Press
Dealing in Death
Ellen Pakkies and a Community’s Struggle with Tik
Sylvia Walker
What drives a mother to murder her child?
In September 2007, Ellen Pakkies, a working mother from Lavender Hill on the Cape Flats, strangled her son to death. The judge in the subsequent trial sentenced her to community service for her crime. What had driven Ellen to this horrific deed, and why the ostensibly light sentence for such a heinous crime? And why did Ellen’s tragic story grip the imagination of the country?
The scourge of drug addiction has swept across South Africa in recent years, affecting every level of society. The use of tik, particularly in the Western Cape, has skyrocketed over a short period of time, unlike anything else ever experienced. It was Abie Pakkies’s addiction to this drug and the horrendous impact it had on his and his family’s lives that drove Ellen to murder. Her trial exposed the dark underbelly of a community crippled by drug and alcohol abuse and focused attention on the plight of those who live in poverty and do not have recourse to drug rehabilitation centres and other measures effective in the treatment of drug addicts.
Dealing in Death looks at the global and local drugs culture, the predicament of Ellen Pakkies and other mothers like her, and an impoverished community and the apartheid laws that gave birth to it.
ISBN: 978 1 77020 031 9 (print)
ISBN: 978 1 77022 098 0 (ePub)
ISBN: 978 1 77022 099 7 (PDF)
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