“Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.” 

- Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter (by J.K. Rowling)

This quote from one of the greatest fictional wizards of all time has stuck in my head lately. Albus Dumbledore talks a lot about the importance of choices in how they shape a person’s life.

On Boxing Day my Mum and I were thrown, along with many of our close family friends – who to all intents and purposes minus blood and DNA are our family – into a state of shock when we found out that a member of that family friend group had been discovered dead on Christmas Eve.

Was this death unexpected? No.

Was it shocking and tragic? Yes.

26th December is a big huge daze. Throughout the day came tear filled, traumatic phone calls to one another as we tried to piece events together, and at one point my Mum asked me “When was Christmas Day?…Was it really only yesterday? It feels so long ago now“

All we could think was back to the 80s-90s. Me and this person as kids who were inseparable every time we got to be in the same place. My earliest memories involve this person – in holiday in Spain, sitting in the back of the car yelling ‘here we go, here we go, here we go‘ as we drove away from one of our homes beginning a journey promptly followed by us turning to face the back window and shouting ‘Stop following us! Stop following us!’ repeatedly to any car that was behind us until they turned in a different direction.

Our poor Mums. It must have been incredibly noisy and irritating!

We would go to the zoo when they came to Edinburgh, and to Ramboland when we went up to them. They lived in a more rural area, so when went to them I got to jump over burns and climb trees which are things you don’t get so easily growing up in the inner city. We held hands, made up our own games (usually based around our favourite programme He-Man) and used to tell everyone we were going to get married when we grew up.

As we grew older and became teenagers neither of us would visit with our mothers as often, and soon they moved abroad.

Over the last few years, my friend made poor choices, and despite numerous attempts by many to help him make better choices and help him out of messes he got himself into, those choices continued to be precisely those that were worst for him.

One question we all asked: How did it come to this? How did it all go so wrong?

And as my Mum said ‘there by the grace of God goes [your stepbrother]‘. Another person who made poor choices and happened to be one of the unlucky ones, and ended up in hospital for over a year. He’s now coming out the other side, much better. Perhaps not so unlucky after all.

But my friend is not.

I have many friends that will happily drink alcohol every day, others that don’t think it’s a big deal to smoke a little cannabis every now and then.

I think it’s a huge deal because I can see how slippery that slope can be. I thank my lucky stars that my emetophobia overpowered the desire to escape, relax or take substances to help me socialise.

I honestly do believe that it saved my life.

Because I know that it so easily could have been me.

But when the opportunities and temptations came I made different choices.

There’s another quote from Dumbledore I love that talks about choosing between what is right and what is easy. Note the words there – he doesn’t say ‘right and wrong’ but between what is right and what is easy.

I hope that the next time you, my reader, have to make a choice you are able to have the courage to choose what is right over what is easy.

Even if it means taking the courage to stand up to your friends.