text: The eleven year itch. TV has a different quality when you’re sick. It’s not as comforting as it usually is. It drags, hurts her with every commercial. She watches Dr Phil, then Maury, then Entertainment Tonight. She flicks through channels, trying to find something to distract her. TV’s big promise is that it can be your friend, you can laugh with it, cry with it. She doesn’t own Netflix or Hulu. She is old fashioned in that way, she doesn’t have the internet either. She uses it at work, but doesn’t necessarily trust it. With the internet there’s no filtering process, everything and anything could be thrown at you. Pornography, beheading videos, gambiling websites, viruses. All this scares her, the randomness of it all. She remembers clearly her niece telling her a story of a time when she had been playing a game online and a scary face had flown out at her. This scary face had flashed with no warning and just filled the screen. Kelly knows that if that ever happened to her she would die inside, she would scream and scream until she ran out of life. If there is going to be a scary face on TV, there will be a warning. A stern voice will tell you that “Parental guidance is recommended” or that this show “ Is for mature audiences”. With TV, although there is no control, the programming has been designed by someone. A programmer has considered what will play. She is in the most marketed to age group 18 to 35. With the internet you have no control, and no one has planned it, the internet just keeps going whether you want it to or not. When she gets out the vodka bottle she has to dust it off. She rubs it clean with a dish rag, grey specs fall off it to pile into the sink. She pours a small glass, then drinks it straight. The moment is over quick, no graduality to it. She feels like a bridge, a big steel bridge with exactly one beam missing, every day cars drive over her, these cars are the general pressure of life. All the tiny but monumental tribulations and humiliations of being a human. These include but are not limited to periods, traffic, headaches, stomach troubles ( Being too full and too empty, the twin pains), acne breakouts, clothes making her look fat, awkward silences, random eye contact, laughing too loud at someone’s joke and much, much more. All these annoying little niggles, that everyone deals with are like cars driving over her. And as the TV commercials got too boring, the bridge collapsed. With one vodka comes two, then three, then the whole bottle, then the sponsor breaking the door down after seeing you through your window, then the ambulance ride, then the stomach pump. When she wakes up in the uncomfortable bed it feels like someone has shoved a fire poker down her throat, she coughs and realises that she’s drained and dehydrated. She can hear her brother near her, he’s on the phone. “ The dumb cunt’s only gone and fucking killed herself.” he says into the phone. “ What?” “ No she’s not actually dead it’s an expression, she’s alive but she’s still out, Soph I thought we were past this.” She should be offended by this, her own brother calling her that, but it isn’t the first time and in a way he is right, it’s all her fault, no one else's. Technically she could blame her neighbour, for giving her the bottle which did her in, she could blame the cold that made her stay home from work, or even blame the television programmer for putting such boring ads. But the neighbour didn’t know better, she had given it to her as a moving in present and she hadn’t thrown it or poured it down the sink. She probably could have gone to work, sure her throat was sore and her nose was blocked but what was that compared to this. Maybe if she had just adapted, gotten a netflix account, then she wouldn’t have been bored by those ads, those horrible monotonous ads. As they are driving back from the hospital her brother tells her so many cliched things that she’s dangerously close to rolling her eyes or sighing. She fights the urge though, cause that would make him explode, he’d call her a cunt, a drunk, a waste of space, time and energy, a waste of life and talent, and he’d be right. These things he would say wouldn’t hurt her, she had accepted those long ago. She knew that he would feel bad though, he probably had never called another woman a cunt, she never saw him so full of rage. The reason she doesn’t sigh or roll her eyes, but only nods and looks sorrowful is because of him. If he explodes, he will feel terrible, there will be the horribly awkward silence on the drive home then the few days of respite, before he calls her. He will cry on the telephone, tell her sorry, how sorry he is for hurting her and calling her names. And even though she knows this is terrible, it’s non the less true that when she gets these phone calls she is bothered and annoyed. She feels that he shouldn’t get to play both sides, call her a cunt then comfort her. She feels annoyed that he feels so obliged to her, she doesn’t want to let him down, but would rather do that then let him down, then let him apologize to her for it. Kelly has gotten adept at sensing what face people are pulling on the phone. She can tell from people’s tone, the subtle shifts and lulls in their voices, the words emphasized, and the pauses. When she first got out of rehab all the phone calls were outgoing, she would be reaching out to people to talk, to ‘ catch up’ as her mother used to say. When ever the phone connected and she spoke there would be a pause, as if who she was calling had received a call from a ghost. Then they give a hesitant hello, that rises up in tone at the end which tells you that it’s actually a question. Kelly knew her that at this point the person would be rolling their eyes, unsure how to feel. And when you answer back hello the second hello is triumphant and soaring. A hello with an exclamation mark as if to compensate for the question. Their face would remain the same though, The chat is so overbearingly happy that it annoys you, you almost want them to burst into tears and feel sorry for you, almost. This overhappy response is precisely the second worse response someone could have to someone coming out of addiction. But the feeling sorry for you is the worst, the one time this has happened to her confirmed it for her. It had been Naomi, a friend from her public relations degree, bubbly Naomi, always too friendly, like an overeager dog that drools in your lap from excitement. Naomi hadn’t burst into tears, she had felt sorry for her though. “ Oh you poor petal.” She said. At this point Kelly hung up the phone. There’s a thirty second delay and then the phone rings again, and it’s her, Naomi, the overeager dog wants to call back to drool more. She grabs the phone, ripping it straight from the wall, and she smashes it against the wall, smashes it until chips of black plastic fly off. She had slumped to the ground, black phone in hand. As her brother drives her home, she remembers all of this, all the painful phone calls after rehab. When they get inside Sophie is waiting for them. She’s a big woman, not fat, but she certainly takes up space, occupies a room. When her brother first got together with her, she had wondered why. But one night when they had locked gazes she understood. She had warm brown eyes, like a cow’s. Those eyes were always smiling, they would take you in and make you feel wanted. When ever she looked into her sister in laws eyes she feels better, no matter how dire the situation. She feels loved. She just imagines what it’s like for her brother, getting to see those eyes all day and wake up next to them. This is why her brother loves this woman, he may have a hundred other reasons but she knows this is the true reason. Sophie is dressed up, in a lovely brown dress which suits her figure well. She has a job interview. It reminds Kelly f the time when she vowed she would never drink again. She was 21 years old, she and three colleagues Jane, Ruby and Alex had been out celebrating. They had just finished a campaign for breast cancer, and it was received well . They are all dressed in cocktail dresses, Kelly in a peach one. They had just been profiled for a major magazine, under the headline ‘ The New Woman Of PR’. The four of them had stood looking fiercely into the camera, sophisticated and intelligent. They were at an upscale cocktail bar. The bar had ridiculously sexual names for cocktails. Kelly remembers blushing slightly at the titles, but the other girls had ordered them confidently. She was the least confident in the group... until she got some alcohol into her. By the time she had had four glasses of something called a ‘Cocksucking cover girl’. A gaudy pink drink with a high alcohol content, she’s on a roll. She would order more but the girls are hinting they want to leave, and she figures that she can drink at home anyway. As they leave the fancy bar, down a set of concrete steps, Kelly is in the front, rushing ahead laughing. Her white heels crack on the last step and she trips, she lands roughly on her left hand. The pain blooming there is so intense she pukes. She sprays pink all over her peach cocktail dress. She rolls onto her back, and looks up at her friends. As she realises that she has actually hurt herself ( it will later be diagnosed as a sprained ankle and a fractured wrist), she feels it. A stream of urine flows down her leg. She is laying on the ground, in her own vomit,and now piss is streaming down her leg. She looks down between her legs then back up at her friends. She sees the three of them there and she knows that she never wants to drink again, actually that’s not true. She knows that she never wants to be drunk again. Never wants another hangover or drunken stumble, never wants to be bent on her knees over a toilet and firing chunks into the bowl. Alex, who is wearing bright neon yellow, laughs, and she points, actually points like a bully in a cartoon, she grabs her stomach. She's laughing so hard. Ruby, adorned in a cocktail dress the same colour as a ‘ Cock sucking covergirl’ looks down at her and smirks. Ruby has always hated her, Kelly knew it and this proves it. Jane is the worst. Jane is the only one who she thinks of as an actual friend, the only one that she will stay in contact with. Jane looks at her with a mix of pity and disgust. It was after that that she went to rehab, and it was hard as hell, she never tries to tell people how hard it was, because it will sound cliche and self pitying but it was. It was physically, psychologically and spiritually draining, she felt like she was broken down and built up again, several times. At times she thought of suicide, just to end the process. If she were dead she wouldn’t have to worry. Rehab was terrible, but once it was done, about a year after, she felt content. Sure there was the awkwardness of phone calls, and the pitying looks she would get from people, but it was a piece of cake compared to the hell of rehab. But as the years of rehab went by it faded. They often say that long term alcoholics forget how bad it was. She didn’t forget, she couldn’t. How do you forget the worst thing in your life? So this is why as she is fearful when she is sitting on the couch with her brother and his lovely, cow-eyed wife. In three seconds eleven years of hard work went down the toilet. As she was drinking the vodka down she didn’t once think of all the heartache it would cause. This is why she feels a deep despair. Because even if she survives 11 years what’s to say that it won’t all happen again, in three seconds of blind craziness she will drink and be back at the beginning of the horrible cycle. What if she makes it to twenty years? Twenty one years? It’s the same really. She is 99 percent sure she will never relapse, but then again before the boring TV ad and vodka fiasco she had been 99 percent sure. She will always be 99 percent sure. You are always an addict, no one used to be an addict. For the rest of her life the cars will keep coming, she will need to build the bridge and hope all the beams are there, but you never know and you never will.