So let me tell you how I messed up my life. It’s true: luck favors the brave and prepared, but it also chooses the foolish, the drab and unwise, and I’m the latter.

I had just dropped out of varsity. My parents were devastated. They’d always wanted me to become a doctor. But I hated every part of it: the fancy jargon, the prospect of cutting people open, tending to them, and, most crucially, the showy prestigious title that awaited me on the other end of the finish line. I was out of my depth, the fuel that sustained the need to keep my parents’ hopes up fizzled, and I was inevitably ejected by the second semester.

I was snoozing, sunk into deep blue dreams, when I heard a series of sharp knocks. I walked slowly, befuddled, towards the door and opened it.

“Hehe, Margaret, the nerve of this boy!” my father shouted, as he shook his head in fury and agitation at the sight of me.

Petrified, barely jolted from the mistiness of sleep, I fumbled. “Whoa, Mom…Dad. What are you doing here? Is everything right at home?”

My father’s temper grew uncontrollably to the size of the room. My mother trembled, and under her puffy eyes lay recently strewn tears.

“You’re out here living it up, huh? Look at this pigsty! I’ve failed as a father…Look around, alcohol bottles piling up in age against each other. This is how you thank us, Thuso? By dropping out and acting a fool? I didn’t raise you like this!”

My mother’s tears rolled grimly down her cheeks. All the weeks I had spent partying up a storm, collecting bodies, and thriving in the Braamfontein scene like all the wild, cool kids had finally caught up with me. I could only seek an inexplicable answer from the cold floor in embarrassment. Of course, the least I owed them was to tell them about my decision.  

In desperation, like a fish blundering to escape the jaws of truth, I responded, “How did you know? Eish…I…I meant to tell you. I swear…I was going crazy doing something I don’t love. You know I enrolled because I wanted to make you proud? But I couldn’t any more. Just the thought of waking up to attend class was a drag. I mean, numbers don’t lie. Look at my results from the past semester. Some modules I barely passed. Some I had to make it by special exams. What a lousy doctor I’d be!”

The air particles compressed… zap…zing!

I had earned my mother’s slap.

“How could you? How spoiled you are! Our retirements! Dear lord, this child! David, mara where did we go wrong? Where did we go wrong, Lord?” she pleaded, misty-eyed, shaking excessively.

My father couldn’t take it. He was a bruised and severely confused man. He’d led the family for years with old-fashioned wisdom, and a tight fist to secure our future, which I was so carelessly putting in jeopardy. What would they say in Hospital View, Tembisa, about us? Decorated son of the esteemed nurse and librarian — just another township failure, nothing shocking, nothing to see.

Ferociously he tore up the paper from the University of Witwatersrand that had relayed the bad news and screamed, “Pack your goddamn things right now!”

“Yewena! Didn’t you hear me? Make it really quick, boy! I’m not wasting any more damn cents and time. And know from now on, I’m cutting you off!”

I dug through the small wardrobe, spading out all my clothes at lightning speed. Cutting me off? I gradually changed gear, slowing down as the gloomy prospects that awaited me back home unsettled my mind…Little did I know that things were only going to get darker.

Tell us: Have you ever had to study something you hated? Did you carry on, or call it quits? Do you think that was the right decision?