Temptation

Temptation

5:09pm

The smell of my Aunt's breath is pulling me closer and closer to her. She’s telling me a story I’ve heard before, it's of no interest to me. It’s the glass in her hand and the fragrance of whiskey on her tongue that is holding my attention.  The clinking of the ice in her whiskey glass is like a lullaby, it’s weirdly comforting and devastatingly tempting. She laughs at her own joke and spills her drink in the process. I think I hate my Aunt. I think I hate them all. They don’t know me. I can’t let them know me.  I just have to get through one party, one party and then I can jump on the last train back to London tonight. I promised my Step Dad I would be at my Mums birthday but that's the beginning and end of my obligation.

5:12pm

It’s all the laughter, the loud drunk cackling that's really making me want to peel the flesh off my bones. Have they always been this obnoxious? It’s been so long since I’ve been with my family I don’t remember what they were like before. I left my home town at twenty three. I followed a boy to London, although I’ll never admit that to anyone but You. To everyone else I say I was bored and needed a change, I needed to follow my dreams and explore. Bullshit really but everyone believed me. I needed to escape and disappearing into a man seemed as good an idea as anything else. It worked out though, in a way… We dated for a year. I always loved him more than he liked me. We plodded along inside my delusion for a while, I spent most of our time together convincing him he should be with me. I think eventually he just got bored of it all. My best friend found his tinder profile. I didn’t confront him, I didn’t tell him I knew. He left me after falling in love with a ballet dancer. Such is life. 

What was I supposed to do? Sit home alone? No, of course not. I went out a lot. Any invitation I accepted. Anything to be away from myself, to bury the humiliation, the hurt.  It helped that I worked in a bar. Co workers and customers alike would invite me out. I would wake up on unfamiliar sofas. I made myself coffee while Strangers slept around me. Three or four times a week I would find myself drinking someone else's cheap vodka. Forgetting all about the man who didn't want me. He was just a band aid that got torn off too quickly, leaving a raw wound uncovered. My Fathers death and my Mothers betrayal laid bare. I had to find other ways to get through the day.

5:15pm

My Step Father has his hands on my Mum's lower back. I can smell the whiskey my Aunt spilt, soaking into the carpet. It’s taking more self control than I want to admit to not chug the last drop of whiskey out of the glass, fuck the glass I want to ring out the rug and have a proper drink. What am I doing? I can just go to the bar and help myself. It's not like any of them know. I’m just afraid of them seeing me that way, I’m afraid of anyone seeing the real me, afraid that my perfectly curated excuses for the state of my life will crumble. Mostly I’m afraid I’ll say too much.

I didn't get this way overnight, it happened so slowly I didn’t even notice until it was too late. After a while the three or four parties a week were no longer enough to numb me. The nights between events were too hard for me to handle alone. I started stopping at the twenty four hour off licence on my way home, picking up two bottles of their cheapest wine . I’d go home, and get on tinder. I’d find a Stranger for the night and drink one bottle with them. Play the game of getting to know each other. When we were finished, while they slept I would drink the other bottle.

5:18pm

I’m sitting in the corner of the Working Mens Club, watching them all dance. It's really too early for them to be this drunk, not that I can talk. No one asked me about my life in London so I haven’t had to lie yet. People always think more about their own lives than anyone else, maybe that's why my drinking went largely unnoticed for so long. I worked in a bar full of students who liked to party. I wasn’t the only one coming into work with a headache, a dry throat and suspicious substances in their hair. Unfortunately I was the only one who showed up late everyday, who regularly forgot to shower, the only one to pass out in the storage cupboard, the only one to get woken by a supervisor only to vomit on the floor at their feet.  That wasn’t why they fired me though. In the end it was stealing the booze that pushed me out the door. The off licence had raised their prices, it is what it is. Obviously that's not the story I told my mother when I called her asking to borrow money. I blamed stress and a toxic work environment. She believed me, why wouldn’t she?

5:21pm

Mum is laughing so loudly. She never laughed like that with Dad. Maybe that's why she only waited 3 months after the funeral to introduce me to Dave. Only one year before she moved him into our family home. Only 18 months before walking down the aisle.  I actually met him at the wedding, the boy I followed into this life. My new dads, best friend's son. Good looking, funny and lukewarm about the attention I was giving him. He served his purpose for a while then I filled the void with vodka, wine and strangers' bodies. 

After I got sacked from the bar I couldn’t seem to find another job, keeping track of interviews, appointments, what day of the week is what became almost impossible. I had jumped down the rabbit hole with no way to get back out.

5:27pm

The whole room stinks of bodies and alcohol. I want to leave so bad. I don’t know why it was so important that I came today. Before my Step Dad called asking me to come to the party I had gone months without visiting, weeks without calling home. When I did pick up my Mothers calls I told her I was trying to find myself, that I was taking courses, studying new subjects, trying to better myself. In reality I was consuming myself with alcohol and Strangers. For a while at least. I don’t know when it happened but at some point I stopped looking like my tinder pictures. One Stranger told me I looked like a grey alien in the morning. To be fair he had a point. My hair stuck to my skull limp and greasy, my face had grown gaunt and my skin, like he said, was grey. The once enthusiastic Strangers would walk into my flat and look around, look at me and leave.

5:30 pm

Would one drink ruin my cover? What do You think? It is a party, no one will bat an eyelid if I let myself go. My Uncle is standing so close that I can smell the beer he’s been drinking all night. I want to tear the bottle out of his hand and down it.  “You’re better than this!” Whoops, I said that out loud. My Uncle doesn’t even notice. I can’t stay here. I need a drink. I’ve only been here an hour, but it took me 3 hours to pull myself together, to find clean clothes, wash my hair and put on enough makeup to cover the neglect. I had one chug of vodka before I got on the train.

5:33pm

I’m sorry to dump all this on You. I have no one else to tell. My family is dancing and laughing around me. All I feel is resentment. I do hate them, sometimes.  I’m angry at them for not seeing through my lies, for not caring enough to look deeper. Is that unfair?

I guess the real reason I’m telling You all this is because I need… something. Maybe guidance, maybe help. Whatever You are, above or below, I’m almost past caring. If you have a way out, whoever You are, I’ll take it. Someone put a green glass bottle filled with amber liquid in my hand exactly three minutes and 40 seconds ago, now forty two seconds. Fuck it, its time to stop hiding, It’s time I cried for help.