A letter to students

Dear student, I write this dispatch with “I wish I knew” thought for I’m now lamenting why I started using drugs in the first place. Indeed experience teaches fools!

To begin with, I’m conveying my sorry honors to all my primary and high school teachers for their brawl to see me prosper and join a superior university. I honestly didn’t mean for this to occur neither did I expect – it just came like a burglar.

My early days on campus were good, we were known as ‘freshaz’ to mean new students. I made sure personally I never squandered a lecture, did all the assignments and never got supplementary but the kinds of friends that I made is what made me be who I am today: just a dreamer.

I recall my name used to be on everyone’s lips whether the lectures or the students, I remember that my classmates used to consult me during studies.

 I remember that everyone loved the old me because I looked like success but as it goes, too much of something…

My plan ‘A’ never really failed but I skipped to the rest of the alphabets by falling for the cheap fame.

A fame that has led me to a place that I can never be proud of even after my death! A place where cold and loneliness are the only close friends!

Mum, to be specific, I met with friends that you had always warned me against each day that I was on my long holiday.

The friends whom you said will never want to see you succeed, the friends whom you said came from the rich families to destroy those who showed signs of competition.

Friends whom never showed respect, the friends whom you said I should never even think they existed!

It started with a puff, then a sip, then a sniff, then an injection, then all! “But why, wasn’t I thinking, didn’t I consider my family background, was I drugged before I started using it?” I still don’t get it but what I know is that peer pressure took part.

Dad, I still remember the promise that I made to you a while ago and it hurts me each day that I’m in this dungeon.

The promise of making sure you enjoy my success in your elderly for the extra hours you struggled in the Government office to make sure I had school fees.

For the abuses that you got from bank to bank tellers trying to get a loan for your child to get a good education, for the numerous high-pressure I gave you each week when I asked for pocket money. I’m sorry.

The world was so cruel to me when I thought sneaking out of campus was a good idea (sorry you never knew about that). I thought I had become a grown up only to realize it was the effects of drugs.

To my younger siblings, tell them I am sorry for letting them down as a first born, tell them to take their studies seriously because they are the only ones who can get our family’s dignity back after what I did.

Lastly, please make copies of this letter and distribute them to different campuses so that they will stick them on the notice board for every student to read.

I want them to know that a simple mistake in life can cause you a lifetime in hell, that while at school they should not do what others are doing but stick to their true self, let them know that second chance is never guaranteed when you mess up.

Yours sincerely
Former Student.