My self-destructive streak continued into another week. With me having no absolute sense of direction, and purpose in life, I needed help. And for my friend Mark, who tried to be there for me, I paid him back like only a traitor would; I made a move on his girlfriend. Don’t blame me; blame it all on the alcohol I have been taking these past few weeks.

That day, I wasn’t even drunk, but considering the amounts I had taken the previous two days, I was obviously still intoxicated.

So, we are at this party, and Mark’s girl Gina comes along flirting with me, like she usually does. What she didn’t know was that today I was a different man. I had issues, and I wasn’t thinking straight.

So, I told her to stop fooling around, dump the silly games and we hook up. She laughed it off. Then I grabbed her and took her outside, and told her I wasn’t joking. I was tired of playing games; I wanted her for my girlfriend.

She knew that I had been recently dumped. When she realized I wasn’t joking, she stopped laughing, and told me to go to hell. "For heaven’s sake, Mark is your best pal. You have known the guy for ages.

How do you even think of this? You know what? You are not half the man he is, and you don’t deserve his friendship. Go get some help!” and she walked off. I noticed that these days, females are always walking away from me. The party was good; everyone seemed to be having fun, apart from me.

I waited outside for Mark to come all guns blazing, but he never came. Back inside the house, I saw Gina standing next to Mark. She looked at me, with such a look of disgust that I felt really dirty. And I was sorry for having hit on her.

Am not the kind of person who stabs his friends in the back, but recently, I had been doing many things I shouldn’t have been doing. I left and went back home twenty minutes later. I needed to be alone to figure out this whole mess that my life had become.

First, I needed to cut out the drinking totally. It was messing me up, and my work was suffering. My boss had noticed that I wasn’t alert. The alcohol had to go. Next, I had to stop being foolish; I couldn’t let a girl rule my life?

Determine my levels of happiness! Push me into desperation till I was a maniacal alcoholic! That just wasn’t going to work, because at this rate, in two months, I’d probably be in hospital suffering from liver failure due to too much alcohol. So, I had to turn a new leaf.

Alone in my flat, with the lights off, I started on the process of cleansing myself. I needed to get purpose in my life, I needed to have direction. My current trend was too self destructive. I got a pen and a piece of paper, one of Carole’s old notebooks. Just seeing the note book, I almost lost focus, but I told myself to be strong.

Then I started writing the things I wanted to stop doing; alcohol, self destructiveness, not valuing my friends, blah blah.

And at the end of the list, I wrote "Jasmine”. I don’t know why I wrote her name; because she wasn’t something I had any control over. But I wrote her anyway. I told myself that the next day, I would talk to her.

Make peace with her. Offer to do something nice for her, only if she would leave me in peace. She was evidently bent on her vendetta, to ensure that I never settle down with any girl.

And that is something I needed out of my life right now, because in restructuring my life I had remembered something; there was a girl called Mercy, a nice churchgoing girl who I really liked.

I intended to ask her out on a date, see if she could be my girl. But with Jasmine still hounding me, I might as well not even bother!

Ends