I Was So Busy Fitting In, I Forgot Who I Was

By Gogo Bathini Mbatha

The morning I woke up in that hotel room, my first thought was not “where am I?” It was “how did I get here?”

I was lying on top of the blankets, still dressed, my shoes off beside me. Alone, thank God. I looked around slowly, and slowly I realised I knew this hotel. But before the shame came, fear came first.

I had no memory of how I had got there, and my mind raced with the possibilities. Had I done something terrible? What state was my car in? Sitting there on the bed, trying to piece together the missing hours, I was engulfed by fear. Then the shame arrived, fast and heavy.

Let me go back to the night before.

It was a biker’s braai in a township close to home, and I was in top form. Jokes flying, people laughing, me in the middle of it all. The perfect extrovert. And I kept drinking. I’m told I became arrogant. People kept saying, “Bhuti, you’ve had enough, slow down a little,” but I did not want to be stopped. I did not want to hear it.

I had a plan that night, too. A travelling bag was sitting in my car because I was supposed to be in Durban. I would stop emajiteni, have a few drinks, and then hit the road. I never went to Durban.

I cannot tell you exactly how the night unfolded after that, but I know where I found myself the following morning.

That morning I walked to reception, still ashamed, because I could not remember paying for the room. I greeted the lady at the desk and said, “I’m still around; I’m just going to the car to fetch my bag so I can take a bath.” I was acting normally. I was not feeling normal.

Then the manager followed me. She knows me. She said, “Hey Gogo, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but the way you were yesterday… I saw that people were watching you, and they recognised who you are. So I pretended something was wrong, as if you were not well, as if you were sick. Then I walked you straight to your room. I knew you would pay.”

Think about that. A woman had to protect my dignity because I could not protect it myself.

I could not remember driving. I could not remember getting out of the car, or walking into that room. Nothing. An entire stretch of my life, gone. That is how bad it was.

Standing there, I asked myself a question I had avoided for years. Who was that man at the braai?

Because he looked like an extrovert. The jokes, the energy, the big presence. But an extrovert does not end the night like that. For years, alcohol had dressed me up as someone I am not, and that night was another reminder of just how far I had drifted from the real me.

I did not have to look far to find the real me. I only had to look back.

I was a quiet child. I could hang around with friends, sure, but I would always slip away and want to be alone. And I mean, I wanted it. Some of my best childhood memories are of playing by myself, talking to myself, in a world only I understood. I had toys. I had friends to play with. But that private time? It was priceless. Truly priceless.

If you wanted to find me, you would check behind my brother’s shack. There I was, all alone, pretending to be a sangoma, throwing the bones, ngibhula, ngingedwa. No audience. No friends. Just me and my game, completely happy.

Even when the kids in the street played house, I was never the child. I was always the father. The grown-up, the responsible one, the one who did not say much. An old soul in a small body.

And when I felt safe, the other side of me would come out. The jokes. The humour. The timing. People would look at each other and say, “He’s so quiet all the time, but wait until he opens his mouth!” And someone would laugh and say, “Hhayi, Mbatha, you’re too much!”

That was the real me. Quiet first, funny second, and never loud for the sake of being loud.

So the man at the braai, and other drinking sessions, was a stranger. The real me was already there all along, behind a shack, throwing bones, completely content.

But pretending to be someone else did not just cost me my dignity that night. It cost me my time, my peace, and, in many ways, my judgement. When you are busy trying to prove you are a certain kind of person, you start making room for people who fit that image, even when they have no place in your real life.

I saw it clearly when I looked at my phone from those days. At one point, I was in more than ten WhatsApp groups, and I promise you, we were discussing nothing. Rubbish. Porn. Fake friends. People pitching “business opportunities” that really just wanted my money. Community members with big smiles and bigger agendas. And the list goes on.

Why was I in all those groups? To prove something. To prove I was an extrovert, a man who is comfortable in every room and loved in every circle.

I was not that man. I was just tired, and I did not know it.

Think about how much of my energy went into those conversations. Hours of my day, gone. Hours that should have gone to my family, to my work, to myself. I was giving my best time to people who would not have noticed if I disappeared. Maybe you know that feeling. Being surrounded by people and still feeling completely alone.

Today, sober, I am enjoying something I never expected: peace. Quiet evenings. Time with my own thoughts. Moments that belong only to me. And I will say it with a straight face: I am an introvert. I always was. I just needed to turn my back on booze.

My boundaries are clear now, and I am not shy about them. If a conversation adds nothing to my life, I am out. If a person drains me, I do not give them my time. It is that simple, and it is the best decision I have made.

And look at what I got back. Time for my family. Time for my good friends, the real ones. And my clients? They finally get the attention they deserve, because I am no longer giving my best hours to people who never gave me anything.

If you are wearing a costume right now, whether it is a drink, a crowd, or a role you have learnt to play, ask yourself what it is costing you to keep wearing it. You may be so busy trying to be the person everyone knows that you have forgotten the person you were before all the pretending began.

I had to put the bottle down before I could see myself clearly. The man I had been trying so hard to be was never the man I needed to become. I needed to find my way back to the man I had always been.