by Helen Pryke
“What?” I exclaimed, incredulous. “How dare he…”
“He’s not the only one,” she continued. “We have complaints from various members of your department about your lunchtime drinking and the quality of your work, or lack of it.”
“I don’t understand. Who on earth…?”
“Jennifer, I have to issue you with an official warning,” Rebecca said, suddenly much less chirpy. “The next time you come back from lunch even just the tiniest bit tiddly, I’m afraid you’ll be asked to leave the company.”
“I’ll be fired, you mean,” I said bitterly. “You do know that the men have a few pints every lunchtime, don’t you? Even dear old Mr Pennington.”
“Yes, I know, Jennifer. It’s acceptable if their work doesn’t suffer in any way.”
I frowned. “So it’s one rule for them and another for us women, is that right?”
Rebecca pursed her lips. “Jennifer, try to understand. We turn a blind eye to anyone, anyone, drinking at lunchtime as long as they are able to work as normal. From these complaints, it would appear that your drinking is impairing you from working in the afternoons.”
I glared at her. I could feel the vodka burning in my empty stomach, and the thumping in my head was an incessant drumbeat that was getting louder by the second. I swallowed hard to stop myself from being sick all over chirpy Rebecca’s office carpet.
“I need a coffee,” I mumbled.
“All right, off you go now.” Rebecca picked up a pen and scribbled something on a notepad. “And remember what I said. This is your last chance, Jennifer.”
Two cups of coffee and some biscuits later, I was feeling more human. And very upset. How dare they treat me like this, I fumed. It’s so unfair. I sat at my desk all morning, the anger building as I went over and over my telling off from Rebecca. By lunchtime I was ready for the pub, more than ready.
I staggered back into the office at three o’clock, my breath stinking of vodka, singing “I wanna know what love is,” at the top of my voice. At ten past three I was being shown out of the building, hugging my handbag to my chest, still singing.
“Goodbye dear friends, Romans and countrymen,” I yelled, bowing towards the shocked faces at the windows. “I hope I never see you fucking bastards again!”
Somehow I made it home. Mum didn’t say anything, she just gave me a glass of water and put me to bed. I woke up several times during the night and she was always there, on a chair next to my bed, watching me. I might have been sick a few times too; I vaguely noticed her wiping my hair from my sweaty face and cleaning my mouth.
When I finally managed to drag myself out of bed the next day, Mum was waiting downstairs in the kitchen for me. “Want a coffee?”
I nodded, unable to speak for the moment. She banged around the kitchen, opening cupboards and shutting them more forcefully than was necessary, slammed two cups on the countertop, and shoved the lid back on the metal coffee canister with an echoing clang. Each sound made me wince, as if she had hit me over the head with a hammer. The bubbling of the water in the kettle was similar to the thundering cascade of Niagara Falls, and the click as it turned off rang out clear as a gunshot. I glanced at Mum with a pained expression when she passed me a mug and sat down opposite me without a word.
I took a sip, and the hot, steaming liquid managed to revive me. I started to feel more human and quickly drained the cup.
“Want anything to eat?”
“No-no thanks.” I noticed that my hands were shaking and hid them in my lap, under the table. “This is fine.”
“We need to talk, Jen.” She leaned towards me, looking concerned.
“Not now, Mum. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I feel like shit right now. I’m a thirty-one-year-old divorcee with no job and no future. Do you really have to dig the knife in right now?”
“What better time, then?” she said.
I groaned. “OK, get the lecture over and done with. Then just leave me alone.”
“You’ve become a horrible, obnoxious person, Jennifer. I can see why Paul left you.”
“He didn’t leave me, he cheated on me,” I exclaimed.
“That’s not what he told me. He said he told you to stop drinking or he’d walk out. You decided to carry on drinking.”
“So why did I find him in our bed with another woman, if he’d left me?” I smirked at her, self-righteous indignation flowing through me. “What was he still doing in the house?”
“He wasn’t in your house.”
“What?”
“He was in his new place. You stole his keys when he popped back to pick up his things, and then you let yourself in to his new house.”
“No, that’s not right, it can’t be,” I cried. “He was in our bed, in our house…” I stopped, suddenly unsure. Everything was a blur. He hadn’t yet left me, had he? I couldn’t remember the exact date he had moved out, since every day just ran into the next. I no longer had any conception of time. I tried to focus on certain memories, but they fluttered around in my head, running away from me. I tried to remember the scene, something that would tell me I was right, anything, the curtains, the bedspread, the carpet…
“Oh my God,” I moaned, holding my head between my hands. “The carpet on the stairs. Red. It was red… like blood… oh no.” I started sobbing and Mum was there, holding me, until the anxiety attack had passed.
“I went to his house, didn’t I?” I whispered, shaking violently.
“Yes, sweetie, you did.”
“How could I have been so stupid?”
“The drink, it’s the alcohol,” she said, stroking my hair. “You become another person when you drink. You get out of control, nasty. You have to stop, Jennifer, it’s the only way.”
“How? How do I stop, Mum?”
“I don’t know. We’ll think of something, sweetie. But you have to stop pretending and lying, you’re only hurting yourself.”
Mum made an appointment with her GP and together we explained my drinking problem. Dr Alden didn’t really take me seriously, though. She merely lectured me about the damage I was doing to my liver and the rest of my body. She pulled a few random leaflets from the holders on the wall of the small examination room and, glancing at them in disdain, I found they were about self-help groups. I couldn’t see the point of those. She also prescribed some medicines that would help during the ‘weaning-off’ period. There was no in-depth interview about why I was doing this to myself, or what had triggered it all off. Why should she care anyway? I thought bitterly. No-one else does, not even Mum or Paul, and they’re supposed to love me. What hope have I got with an over-worked doctor who has fifty patients to get through in one morning?
Mum talked me into going to one of the self-help groups. She drove me there and said she’d return in a couple of hours. It was either stay out in the cold or go into a warm building and have some coffee. I chose the latter. It was awful. The attendees were all middle-aged people feeling sorry for themselves and talking about how easy it was to relapse. I refused to go back. So Mum drove me to another one, which had a mixture of age groups. There were a couple of other thirty-five-year-olds and some youngsters, but again they were mostly older people. I liked this one more, so I kept going, finding some solace in the fact that there were others in my situation. I listened as they talked about their problems, inwardly cringing as they burst into tears, and became even more determined not to lower my guard and reduce myself to their state. There was no way I was going to share my innermost secrets with a bunch of strangers, or open myself up to their curious stares and invasive questions.
The nights were the hardest to endure; waking up drenched in sweat, shaking uncontrollably, thirsting for something alcoholic, anything. I would turn on the TV in my bedroom and use the mindless late-night programmes to distract myself from my cravings. Mum would sometimes come in and join me when she heard the TV was on. I tried not to wake her because she was looking more and more exhausted from all the stress and worry
. I knew she checked the wardrobe, the chest of drawers and all the furniture for hidden bottles, but she needn’t have bothered. With no job, I didn’t have any money to buy booze. She offered to give me some pocket money but I refused. I had to avoid temptation.
My withdrawal symptoms made me paranoid and nervous of my own shadow. I obsessively cleaned my room, as the slightest speck of dust sent me into a panic attack. In the mornings, I polished all the surfaces until they gleamed. I then hoovered, and carefully scanned my room for more dust, and then I polished again. I always did this in the same order, remembering to replace each item exactly where it had been. Otherwise I’d think that someone had been in my room, watching me as I slept, ready to take me away at the slightest hint of weakness.
I had to coordinate my wardrobe as well. All my clothes were neatly lined up, in grades of colour, just like a paint chart. Summer wear was to the right and winter wear was to the left. Mid-season wear was in the middle, obviously. Tops and skirts from shortest to longest, then shorts, and finally trousers. Any item that didn’t fit in with the colour or length system went in the bin.
Mum peeked in at me from time to time but only tsked, shaking her head. She had no choice but to put up with my obsessions, as long as they were confined to my bedroom. When I started to scrub the kitchen surfaces with a cloth soaked in bleach one day, she exploded.
“Enough now, Jennifer! Everything’s clean, I did it this morning. Look at your hands, they’re red raw. Stop it, please stop.” She burst into tears and collapsed in a chair, sobbing furiously.
I hung my head in shame. “I’m sorry, Mum. It’s just that I heard the doorbell ring, and I thought they’d come for me, they were here in the house, and I wanted to run away, hide, before they could get me…” The words gushed out in a stream, my speech getting more and more confused.
Mum got up and hugged me. “There’s no-one here, Jennifer. It was just the postman, I had to sign for a special delivery. No-one came in, and no-one’s coming to take you away. I won’t let them.”
I nodded, but I knew that she didn’t understand. My fears were real. I had a constant feeling of dread in my chest from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. My heart pounded so hard at times that I was worried it would burst from my body. But I couldn’t tell anyone, just like I couldn’t tell anyone about the things that had started this all off in the first place. I pushed everything back down to that secret hideaway deep inside of me, the deep pit where even I wouldn’t venture if I could help it. Alcohol had helped; now I didn’t have that any more, I turned to my obsessive paranoias. Anything to avoid facing the pain.
Over the next few weeks, I slowly started to feel more human. My face lost its puffiness, I had less headaches and I started to sleep better. I didn’t fly off the handle any more at the slightest thing and my paranoia was easier to control. I managed to confine my OCD to my room, and left Mum to deal with the rest of the house, apart from adjusting the odd wonky picture on the wall. I didn’t even jump any more when the doorbell rang. Instead, I held my breath and stood still on the spot, paralysed, until I understood who the visitor was. I was proud of the progress I was making, and every day was a tiny step forwards toward my goal of staying sober.
Then the divorce letter arrived, and it sent me over the edge, back into a heightened state of agitation. The fear rose up in me again at the thought of Paul abandoning me, and it tugged at my secret place, urging me to dive back down into the pit. I spent the day in my room, pacing, scratching at my arms until they bled, a sudden craving for wine hitting me with all its force. By the time I had to leave for a meeting, I was a wreck, both mentally and physically. I almost cancelled going, but I knew that Mum had such high expectations for me, and I’d been doing so well. Today was a milestone, six months without alcohol, and I had been looking forward to celebrating with the group. Mum had been talking about it all week, so excited that I’d finally reached this point. I couldn’t tell her about the letter, scrunched up in my trouser pocket like the piece of rubbish it was.
Attending a meeting was the only time I went out of the house alone, and it was only a short ten-minute bus ride, with the bus stop only steps away from the community centre. When I left the house, my head was swirling with thoughts I hadn’t had for a long time, my hands clenching and unclenching as I waited for the bus. The journey passed in a blur, and I suddenly found myself standing on the street, watching the taillights of the bus disappear into the murky night.
The community centre was just metres away, warm and welcoming. But I turned left instead of right and went into the nearby corner shop. The owner smiled and said hello, then went back to his conversation with a customer. The bottle of gin was in my pocket before I knew what was happening. I wandered round the aisles for a bit then said goodbye as I walked out of the shop. Stunned that I was now a thief as well as an alcoholic, I walked to the nearest bench, sat down and took a swig. And then another. And another. Until the bottle was empty.
“Shit.” A passing man looked at me strangely.
“What do you want?” I yelled.
He turned his head and quickly walked on. I stumbled to my feet and saw the community centre door. Ah, that was where I was supposed to be.
Everyone turned as I crashed through the door and staggered over to an empty chair. “Sho shorry I’m late,” I slurred. I took hold of the chair and sat down, my heart nearly stopping as I hit the floor instead.
“Who moved the chair?” I glared angrily around me. Fifteen stony-faced people glared back at me.
Rob, the co-ordinator, rushed over to help me up. “Have you been drinking, Jennifer?” he asked gently.
“Sho what if I have? It’s not against the law, is it?”
“No, but it is against our group’s policies.” He gestured to a nearby chair. “Sit down. I’ll get you a coffee, it’ll help you sober up.”
“Maybe I don’t wanna sober up.” I stamped my foot.
“Jennifer, we’re here to help you,” he said. “Talk to us. Tell us what’s wrong.”
The others nodded in encouragement. I stared at them, my mind buzzing.
“Whatsh wrong,” I started, then belched. I tried again. “Whatsh wrong, is that I wanna drink and you assholes won’t let me!”
“Jennifer, don’t throw away all your hard work,” Rob insisted. “Don’t let the drink win.”
“I don’t give a shit. You can take your stupid group and shove it up your arse.” I delighted at their shocked gasps. “I’m going home and I don’t think I’ll be back.”
My dignified exit was somewhat ruined by my tripping over a chair and banging my shoulder on the door, but I didn’t care. I felt exhilarated, I was finally doing what I wanted to do. The feeling lasted until I got home. The look on Mum’s face deflated me.
“Don’t say anything, Mum. I’m sorry. I’m going to bed now.”
It took two days of lying in my darkened bedroom for the headache to pass. Mum brought me food and drink but she didn’t sit with me this time. I had two long, lonely days to think about… well, about everything. Unable to distract myself with my other obsessions, I couldn’t avoid the pit, hard as I tried, and this time it dragged me in head first.
The drinking had started seven years earlier, after my first miscarriage. Paul had carried on as normal, as if nothing had happened. He told me we could try again when I was ready, while I just wanted to mourn my unborn child, the end of my dreams. I missed imagining my baby growing inside me, that anxious anticipation of its first kick, wanting to know if it was a boy or a girl. All those plans, all those dreams. And then, nothing. Only emptiness, a black hole that sucked all my future into it.
At first I didn’t drink that much, just enough to dull the pain and get through the day. Then I miscarried again, and then a third time. After that I didn’t want to try any more, I didn’t want to suffer any more. I discovered that the only thing that took away the pain was the drink. If only Paul had been willing to talk about our lost child
ren, but he used his work to distract him. No-one wanted to talk about my babies with me, even Mum changed the subject when I tried. So I drank. More and more. Then I found myself a job and that helped for a while. Until my colleagues invited me to go with them to the pub for lunch. And the rest, as they say, is history. I no longer needed to find someone to talk to; when I drank, the demons went away and I could pretend everything was OK. Even though it wasn’t, even though I was destroying myself in the attempt to enjoy my ‘perfect’ life.
I spent those two days wallowing in misery. The few mouthfuls of food I managed to get down churned around in my stomach, threatening to force their way out again, so I stuck to sipping water every now and then. My dry, cracked lips felt taut and strange, my skin was clammy to touch and I seemed to ooze gin from every pore. The smell was unbearable.
Eventually, I was able to get up and have a shower. Feeling better, I went downstairs for something to eat. Mum pottered round the kitchen making some sandwiches while I held a steaming mug of coffee between my hands. The shaking had stopped but I went from feeling freezing cold to boiling hot within seconds. I suddenly found my appetite and I chewed enthusiastically on great big mouthfuls of bread, while Mum nibbled her sandwich like a mouse without saying a word.
“OK, I get it. It’s the silent treatment for now, is it?” With some food and coffee in my stomach, I was starting to feel more normal, and my fiery temper returned with a vengeance.
Mum slumped in her chair. “I just don’t know what to say to you, Jen. I’m tired of worrying about you, wondering what state you’ll come home in, if you’ll find a bottle of alcohol and not have the willpower to resist. You’ve already lost your husband, your job, and your support group, even. What do you have left?” A tear rolled down her cheek. “You’re my only daughter, my only child. Ever since your father died, I’ve done my best for you, I’ve tried so hard. And now I look at you and ask myself what I’ve done wrong.”
