For far too often I’ve made excuses for my choices. I thought I could take an easy way out, but to tell the truth, I was going astray and I had no one who could change the destination of my GPS.

I spent most of my time trying so hard to figure out who I am. The pain of losing a luxury life I had, couldn’t allow me to figure out who was this stranger I have turned into. The problem started when I was having fun with my friends. We were celebrating one of my friend’s birthday party. We departed at 2:15 a.m. and I arrived at my place at 3:30 a.m.

I had many doubts on whether I should enter the house or not but I decided to push away my doubts and enter the house. I found my wife wide awake, surrounded by bags packed with clothes staring at the door, like an owl which spotted a rat. And to make it worse I had lip stick on my T-shirt which I got when I bounced on one of the chicks while I was leaving the pub. She looked at me for a while and said, “I can’t do this anymore, it’s over and we will meet in court.”

I lost all the assets I had since we were married in community of property and she won the divorce case. I had no choice but to find an alternative way which would help me to escape this pain. Drugs, together, with alcohol, became the only friends I had. I spent most of my life in a fantasy world, which was brought by the feeling of being high and having fun with losers I so called my “friends”.

I spent most of my time in my fantasy world and eventually it eradicated my reality. I thought I was having fun, but not knowing that I was tearing at a piece of my health. I couldn’t survive without drugs anymore. They really consumed a lot of my money, and eventually my employee found out that I was a drug addict. That left him with no choice but to dismiss me. That is when I realised that my life was a mess because I had no one in my life to support me. I felt like I was going through a tunnel that doesn’t have an ending.

After 3 years, the money which I had in my savings ran out and I didn’t have any money to buy food or to pay rent. The streets became the only place I could afford, and I had to hustle each and every day just to get food. I became a laughing stock and whenever I saw my former colleagues, I would change streets and rather to go to bed with an empty stomach rather than face embarrassment and ask somebody else for help because my pride wouldn’t allow me.

Time went by, and 13 years passed by while I was living a life of a hobo.

I lost hope about life. I would sometimes wish to commit suicide but I remembered what my father once said to me while he was still alive. He said, “My son, in life you will face different things, which will restrict you from what you were aiming to achieve, and please son never give up, because it’s not over until God says it’s over.”

I just woke up and decided to wear a smile, as if, I had no challenges which I was going through. Then I continued with my journey of looking for a job but I couldn’t find any job since I was a useless drug addict.

I would sometimes, early in the morning, go to the nearest coffee shop and pick up left over foods which were left by shoppers. As I was sitting on a door step, a certain tourist mistakenly dropped a passport and luckily I was there to pick it up. When I returned it to her, she became very happy.

Her name was Cellin. She asked me what had brought such a wonderful man on the streets? As I was telling her what happened, she was already flooding some tears like a waterfall flowing over a cliff on a mountain. She politely asked to take me to counselling. I agreed and attended a 6-month session. She spoke to one of her family members with regards to offering me a HR position in her family’s company.

My life changed after that. I worked for 7 years as an HR officer, and I was promoted to be a CEO. After a few months of being a CEO, I re-gained my self-esteem and decided to propose to Cellin. She didn’t waste any time as she agreed to be with me and said that she had been waiting for this moment for too long. After 4 years in our marriage, God decided to bless us with a son, who made me realise that I had been making excuses for my choices even though I was going astray.

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