Completely Dry

Joanna heard about dry January as an immigrant in the UK. Making sure to dot her I’s and cross her T’s of making and keeping white friends, she acted like she knew what dry January meant when the “friends” she met at “Uni” swore undying allegiance to this pact for the new year over their third round of sake at Christmas dinner in China Town. Dry January? Joanna’s mind tried to analyze what this meant while maintaining an air of je ne sais quoi, masking the anxiety of fitting in that forever plagued her subconscious by downing the alcohol in her glass. Sitting at a cheap plastic table in a seethy Chinese restaurant, the anger she felt deep down was being triggered by the forlorn energy of the migrant servers in the restaurant. She was told that she should at the very least be grateful to even have a seat at this plastic table and while that might be true, it was still bullshit.

Joanna was smart, beautiful and talented but the luck of the draw had birthed her into a country where life’s race got a head start before her potential got off the mark, and coupled with the woes of the single mother who had involuntarily sacrificed her soul for Joanna to be in the UK, Joanna needed alcohol to navigate the game of playing catch up.  Even though Joanna seemed destined for greatness it was all a façade built by her mother to satisfy the unfulfilled desires in her own life. In reality Joanna wasn’t even a migrant, she was lower than that on the totem pole marginally hanging on to a student visa which her family back home thought was tantamount to citizenship. By the time she figured out what dry January was she already knew there was no way she could make it through a day much less a month without alcohol.

“Its gunna be so bloody hard” squealed Elizabeth as she sent Christmas greetings in her family Whatsapp group. They were on vacation in Greece for the holidays. Audrey decided to ease everyone’s grief of giving up alcohol for a whole month by graciously ordering the fourth round of drinks and chiming in that she would be covering the tab as her Christmas gift to us. Joanna played the part she was supposed to, laughing with the group and making a quip. She was finally having fun and couldn’t wait for how many ever more rounds of drinks Audrey was gunna buy. When she got back to her prized single occupancy dorm room which came at the price of shared shitty bathrooms the room spun and she felt nauseous. She was finally home. The nausea and the tears that were about to erupt felt familiar…comforting. She got up to pee in the sink in her room and pour herself a glass of cheap wine she got at Tesco by this point wanting to black out, and she drank until she did.

Thirty-eight new messages. Twenty-seven of them Happy New Year wishes and the rest were Elizabeth and Audrey droning on about dry January and how nice their bodies were going to look from the weight they would lose. How much longer would she have to endure this superficial bullshit Joanna wondered as she typed “OMG, right, same!” in response. For New Year’s Day Elizabeth and Audrey wanted to have brunch so in gratitude for being considered, Joanna agreed even though she didn’t want to. She still hadn’t figured out how she was going to stay in the UK after graduation and she needed every moment of pointless rumination to herself. Too ashamed to ask for their help and having been trained from childhood to feign validation from higher ups she added a “love you guys so much, cant wait to see you” to the chat, poured herself a shot and built up the emotional fortitude to call her family back home.

On her way to brunch the streets were buzzing with life. Surprisingly it wasn’t even that cold and almost skipping down the street Joanna reminisced about her favourite spot back home by the beach drinking rum and letting loose in her local dialect. She popped into a pub, guzzled a pint of beer, popped some trident and continued on her journey to meet her “friends”. Smacking the gum in her mouth was meditative for Joanna but as she chewed away the smell of alcohol on her breath she started to wonder if she should actually try to commit to dry January. She knew she had a drinking problem and felt entitled to it as a matter of fact, but she also knew it was getting worse and she couldn’t make it more than a few hours these days without something to drink.

Why was she drinking so much though? She had never heard of Dry January before or any period of abstinence from indulgences except for religious holidays meant to purge her sins and so the lightbulb of enlightenment this exposure to proper worldly customs in a foreign land was supposed to afford her flicked on and the concept of dry January elicited this simple yet profound question for Joanna, almost like a rite of passage from her primitive state. While she had been knocking drinks back on auto-pilot to soothe years of emotional pain she never thought of pulling the reins in a bit and so maybe in the mysterious ways of the universe her “friends” were her friends after all, a beacon of light to resolving a bad habit she had developed. This question actually stopped Joanna in her tracks and she stood still a few yards from the brunch venue where Elizabeth and Audrey were waiting for her. She knew they were already there because she was always late and they always patiently waited for her no matter how long she took to work through her anxiety and muster up her energy. For the first time she wondered if they knew she was masking pain. What she did know for a fact is that ever since they met her they were there, for her, like really there. She had actually never felt such genuine, non-judgmental love in her life.

Joanna, still standing still, people high on the new year rushing in all directions around her, sighed. It was a sigh of relief and the sigh of donning another burden of gratitude at the same time. She realized Elizabeth and Audrey loved her, and she loved them too, and if they were doing dry January then her need to please the people around her for seeing something worthy in her unworthiness far outweighed her own desires and she couldn’t live another lie, not with them. And so Joanna resolved to swear undying allegiance to her friends for the month of January and sacrifice the only thing that lubricated her life. She would make it through the remaining 30 days without drinking, completely dry.