HIGH SCHOOL
After court, I had already accepted that Aida was no longer in a position to contribute. I guess I just wasn’t paying attention when she offered to pay for Samuel’s school fees on the condition he remained at the same school. Had I taken a moment, I would have realized it was going to cost me more just in fuel than the fees she’d offered to pay. But I didn’t. So now, if we ever wanted to change schools I’d have to subject myself to another year of court proceedings – or whatever else she might think of. Why she would want us in the area was beyond me when it soon became apparent she had no interest in having Samuel for a weekend or even an afternoon cup of tea. Unless Aida’s parents were in town or another family from their church invited Samuel for lunch, for the next four years we never heard from her. With Samuel’s school and many of his friends practically in their backyard, we were naturally spending a lot of our time in and around their neighbourhood. We’d politely say hello when we occasionally ran into each other, and my heart broke for Samuel when he pointed out their house to tell his friends ‘That’s where I live.’
While I might have hoped to see some positive change, we’d been through this all before. I was disappointed for Samuel, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand Aida’s lack of interest. I was used to not hearing from Aida about alternate weekends and school holidays, and her not showing any interest in how Samuel might be doing at school. However, something felt a little different this time. While I hadn’t said much to their pastor, I’d given one of her attorneys a detailed record of all we’d been through. Thinking that it was up to Aida and her attorney to decide what they wanted to share, I’d intentionally kept Grant out of the loop. But while I may have hoped Aida would get the message that I’d had enough, I think she went to work on discrediting my reputation. Now I wondered if it had been a mistake to exclude Grant, as he was an active member of NA.
What would have happened if we’d just sat down with a mediator of their choice? Surely, all of this could’ve been avoided. But perhaps I was just dreaming because I already knew the moment Grant stepped outside to tell Samuel to go away that he’d surrendered his values to her will. While I will always remain grateful that Ellen has Grant in her life, I can’t understand how anyone in Aida’s sphere doesn’t question or challenge her about the obvious neglect of her son. Then again, I couldn’t afford to be taking Grant’s inventory when my own life was becoming decidedly unmanageable.
SALE OF OUR HOME
Instead of worrying about Aida and Grant, I needed to get my own life in order and very little seemed to be going well. No matter what medical or homoeopathic advice I followed, I never regained my energy. When I was first diagnosed with chronic fatigue, I took a step back and thought Okay, my body’s trying to tell me something. Then with everything else that followed, I started to believe I wasn’t going to recover until I’d done what I’d been asked to do. To do that without disrupting Samuel’s life any more than it already had been, I needed to find the right partner – one who could handle or take over the business from me. That turned out to be a lot easier said than done. Firstly, it took a lot more energy and time to train someone than just doing the job myself. Then finding the right team proved to be more difficult than I imagined. And I tried every combination I could think of, from young, recently graduated students with a master’s degree in design, to overqualified experienced production crews from the film industry who were tired of being away from their families. Out of desperation, I was offering incentives and a path to ownership that I had only dreamed about in my career. But nothing I tried seemed to work; no one seized the opportunity or brought in a single new client on their own.
In fairness, there were other factors at play. For one, the world was still recovering from the 2008 banking crisis. Then our target market, comprised mainly of large corporate companies, was facing increasing pressure to comply with South Africa’s policy of black economic empowerment. For decades, African, Indian, and coloured people were systematically excluded from meaningful participation in the country’s economy. I’d like to believe that most South Africans morally understood that something needed to be done to redress the wrongs of the past. Large corporations employed procurement specialists to reassess their supply chain. Ultimately, as a supplier we had to be at least fifty-one-per cent black-owned.
The new reality finally hit home when one of our key clients called me in for a meeting with their new procurement team. I’d been on their preferred supplier list for more than fifteen years. By all accounts, they’d always been more than happy with our service. Year after year without fail, they’d walked away with the best stand design award for the work we had delivered. None of that mattered. The meeting that I was meant to have ended immediately as he turned on his heels and walked straight back out after the simple statement: ‘You’re white.’ I went downstairs to see the marketing team I’d worked with for years. After being complimented on our new proposal, I was told, ‘So sorry that happened. But that’s how it works around here now – you’re male and you’re pale, so you’re out.’
I’d been too distracted at a crucial time, and I’d relied on an initial carve-out in the Act for smaller businesses which should have protected us if applied correctly. Despite all the changes in South Africa, the racial divide between rich and poor remained the same. Most white-owned South African businesses that I was aware of had successfully managed to use the assets they’d accumulated to adjust, or they’d found a way to circumvent the new rules. Many of them seemed to be doing a lot better than before. I couldn’t help regretting that I hadn’t considered selling the business when I was first diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. But even though there were times when I didn’t want to be in this particular business, it had been brilliant to me. It hadn’t taken long before I was able to purchase our home, and I’d managed to remain bond-free while maintaining a two-year reserve. But I burnt through my reserve when I chose to put my energy and resources into finding the right person or team to keep the business going. What I probably should have done is sold or explored other markets.
While others manage to successfully grow their business by using their creditors’ or the bank’s money, I’m just not comfortable with any form of debt. I don’t even like someone paying for my cup of coffee, and I feel like I must immediately reciprocate. I think I’m competent with most aspects of business: design, sales, marketing, and production. But when it comes to borrowing, I’m far too fiscally conservative – I just don’t have the stomach for it.
I’d bought the house we’d been renting, and with the help of our design team I’d managed to turn it into what I believed to be one of the best houses in the area. Then I subjected myself to the painstaking process of subdividing the land which substantially increased the value. It might have been a bit clingy, but a part of me dreamed that the boys would take over the business and we’d build new homes for their families, and I’d be there as grandpa. Our home sold the first day it hit the market and I wondered if I’d undervalued the property. Even so, the agent responsible for the sale assured me that it sold for the highest recorded price.
I had decided to sell mainly because I hadn’t found anyone to run the business and I felt too tired to put myself through the process of training someone new. Then, despite the economic recession and everything else, I started to believe that anything I chose to put in front of what I’d been asked to do would simply be taken away from me, and I had prioritized keeping the business alive instead.
I calculated that if I took two years off to get the job done perhaps I’d recover, and still have enough left over to start all over again. We moved into a high-security complex attached to a popular mall, which happened to house several of Samuel’s favourite restaurants and an enormous gym I thought he would enjoy. We had a longer school run, but it was so much easier to keep Samuel safe, happily fed, and occupied, while I attempted to get on with the job of writing – as I believed I was meant to do.
Except, within days of moving in, I experienced relentless headaches that wouldn’t allow me to sleep. For the next two and a half years absolutely nothing I was prescribed worked for even an hour, which left me severely sleep-deprived. While I could hardly open my eyes, taking a brisk walk did at times bring me some relief. But I couldn’t do that at night, so I’d end up splashing my face with cold water and jogging around inside like a madman, hoping for the same relief. I was losing my mind and driving Samuel to school with only one eye open. I simply couldn’t go on like that.
BIKE
I wasn’t thinking clearly when I bought Samuel a motorbike. Few parents want their children commuting to school on a motorbike and neither did I. And certainly not in a country where roughly one and a half million legitimate driver’s licenses are illegally sold each year, and where just about anyone can obtain an official roadworthy certificate for a truck that doesn’t even have wheels. On the bright side, I got to teach Samuel how to ride. I enrolled him in the most advanced riding lessons that I’d been told about and continued taking him for lessons until his instructor called me aside to tell me, ‘I’ll keep taking your money, but there really isn’t anything more we can teach him.’
I went and bought him an 883 Harley Iron, which to any observer must have seemed quite insane, and under normal circumstances I’d probably agree. But from my perspective, if he was going to be riding a bike to school I wanted him to be safe, and I’d noticed that the traffic generally treated bikers on a Harley with just a little bit more respect. I added the loudest Vance and Hines exhaust pipes to amplify the Evo’s low revving distinctive sound so if anyone didn’t see him coming, they’d certainly hear there was a loud bike somewhere around. I had so many reasons that all seemed to make sense. Samuel was no longer happy being a pillion. I hoped we’d start hitting some country roads together and popping in at bike rallies like we used to do. And with his grandfather’s love of restoring vintage bikes, I saw the bike as another opportunity for the two of them to stay connected. For the first few weeks I rode next to Samuel, and I’d be there waiting when he finished school. On weekends, we’d follow the backroads and I loved having him next to me while showing him a different perspective of our farmlands and spectacular coastal roads. Still, the very first time he rode to school on his own I was way too anxious and believed I’d made an awful mistake.
DEPRESSION
It had been more than ten years since I was first diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. Back then, I was presented with two schools of thought. As I understood it, the cause of my fatigue could be either virus related or the physical manifestation of depression. I didn’t know if the fatigue and the headaches were in any way related, but there didn’t seem to be a solution for either. I kept telling myself I was just feeling tired and it was only a headache, a migraine, but wasn’t cancer or anything serious. Yet those relentless headaches made my life almost unbearable. Then after two and a half years of little or no sleep, just when I thought that I couldn’t take any more, my headaches simply disappeared all on their own and I couldn’t have been more relieved! As part of my initial treatment for chronic fatigue, I’d been on an eighteen-month course of antidepressants. But when I couldn’t tell if the antidepressants were making a difference or not, I asked to be weaned off – which could have been a mistake, but I didn’t know. After the headaches disappeared, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was dealing with depression.
After a few sessions with Kathy who seemed a bit reluctant at first, she referred me to a psychiatrist – someone she’d worked with before, and who apparently had an incredible record for accurately determining a patient’s needs. So many people swear by their antidepressants, and two who I knew wouldn’t even want to think about coming off their meds. Personally, I’m scared of the stuff. Still, in desperation, I surrendered myself to the psychiatric process of trying to find the right medication which would hopefully work. We tried various brands, increased the dosages, and added some pretty scary psychiatric pharmaceuticals to the mix. But everything we tried only seemed to make matters worse. Fourteen months into this process, my world was becoming increasingly dark. So much so, that I could hardly peer through the blinds, let alone go outside. Eventually I realised that instead of helping me, as I’d witnessed them work for others, these drugs were making me suicidal. All too often, all I could think about was how to kill myself while making it look like an accident.
As a last resort, I reluctantly agreed to be institutionalised for three weeks. I hoped that in a safe and protected environment we could give this experiment with antidepressants one last go. I emailed Aida detailing what was going on for me and asked if she would consider taking care of Samuel for the three weeks. I added my concern about him using a motorbike to get to and from school and asked if she was still open to the idea of him staying with her during the week so he could easily walk to school. I was almost always surprised to get a reply, but she did reply rather formally: ‘After careful consideration, my decision remains not to make changes to any of the current agreements that we have in place.’ And I couldn’t help but wonder, what agreement is that? One in which you’ve decided you never have to be there for your own son unless there’s something in it for you?
Either way, I was beginning to feel like a bit of a lab rat, so I wasn’t too keen to be hospitalized in the first place. For the next few months, I kept asking to be responsibly weaned off until the prescribing psychiatrist reluctantly agreed. I felt awful for quite a while, but the suicidal thoughts I’d been having almost immediately subsided and eventually disappeared.
SAMUEL ASKS
I must have been kidding myself, thinking that Samuel hadn’t been affected by what was going on for me. Without telling me, he arranged to see his mother after school. I was strangely and cautiously optimistic for him when he reported that Aida would be happy to have him. Apparently, she hadn’t made an effort to see him only because she wasn’t prepared to deal with me. According to her he wasn’t the problem, but I certainly was. That said, Aida was happy to have him provided they’d have nothing to do with me. Furthermore, if he ever wanted to see me, I’d have to meet him at the Mac Donald’s outlet about a kilometre away from their home. I didn’t say anything to Samuel, but couldn’t help but think what the fuck, you’ve never had a problem before? On the rare occasions when Aida needed to have Samuel with her, usually only when her parents were around, she invariably expected me to drop him off and collect him from their home.
I shouldn’t have gotten upset, because it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes later that I received an email from Aida, which read: ‘My Conversation with Samuel. Please bear in mind that this initial discussion must not be construed as any agreement on our part to change the arrangement that is currently in place. The biggest obstacle in this process is not Samuel or me, but in fact it’s you Daniel, and our past dealing with you in regard to Samuel.’ And again, I had to wonder what dealing was she talking about when I had rarely said no? Except, it wasn’t an initial discussion, as her email suggested because neither Samuel nor I ever heard anything more from Aida about him spending time at their home.
I was pissed off for Samuel, but I honestly didn’t care about her ridiculous spin. Still, each time I was blamed I couldn’t help but wonder if I was missing something or in denial. I even questioned if I was the narcissist who always needed to be right. I know I’m not perfect, and I might even be certifiably insane, but I’ve never been aggressive, and I’ve never neglected my children or denied their mothers’ access. But I know Aida couldn’t say the same. Yes, I handed her over to the court for unpaid child support, as any responsible parent should. By the time the court reached a decision, she was more than eighteen months in arrears. But if anyone cared to calculate, they would quickly see that Aida had successfully managed to avoid contributing to Samuel’s financially well-being for more than fourteen years. And I never actually said no when they had asked if Samuel could start high school with them – it was all in our correspondence. Yes, I did suggest she’d have to continue with Samuel’s child support, but it was only a test. Perhaps one shouldn’t test others. Even so, considering our history, I needed some way to determine whether Aida was sincere about building a relationship with her son or if it was just another one of her ploys.
Children often end up idealising the absent parent and resenting the one who stayed, so I completely get why Samuel would want to believe Aida. I also understand why parents are more inclined to side with their children, even when they’re aware of the truth. Some say there are two, perhaps three sides to every story. Despite what Aida may think of me, how could she possibly explain not seeing her son for another three and a half years after she didn’t get her way? That is punishing her son for her resentments about me. Frankly, I can’t comprehend how anyone buys whatever bullshit she’s chosen to spin. If I’m guilty of anything, it’s that I’ve probably been too accommodating, and I ended up knowing too much. And therein lies the real reason why I’m a problem, especially for those suffering from a borderline personality disorder – the Border Lion.
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