'You Can't Design Your Own Life'

She sat with her arms folded across her chest like armour; in fact, maybe that’s why she did it. She had a habit of cowering behind her limbs when she was scared and today, today she was scared. Her room enclosed her tightly and on the walls hung designs hastily taped without much care onto the peeling yellow paint which was pockmarked with rips and chips from things she pulled off in a drunken haze. It was 12pm, morning for her now that the hangover had faded just enough for her to stand with stumbling over the bedroom furniture which she seemed to see as some kind of obstacle course. To her left the plumes of cigarette smoke bloomed like poison ivy from the ashtray where the smouldering object had been stubbed. A sigh dribbled from her lips like vomit as she forced down three paracetamol in an attempt to rectify the incessant pounding in her skull. Hammers on bone made a sickening sound. 

Focus. She had to focus. 

On her desk lay a stack of requests from clients, emails which she had printed as quickly as possible and in some cases the ink was dragged across the page, smearing the words, from where she had pulled the paper out too soon; the words were barely legible on these pages. 

A ‘To Do List’ by a hungover twenty five year old: 1) call Mum. 2) finish work for client. 3) drink water. 4) stop being a screw up.

She decided as she scribbled the words that she would start with number three and leave the seemingly impossible number four until the end. Drink. She glugged the water down her throat, breathing it in as if it was oxygen. She choked on it. The coughs spluttered from her mouth and she jerked her hand upwards in shock, spilling water on the pile of paper on her desk. “Fuck” she curses her clumsiness and desperately rushes over to her bedside table, wheeling on her desk chair, to get the box of tissues. “Fuck Fuck Fuck” She swore again in a repeated stream of mumbles as she wiped up the water that had smudged some of the documents further. At least this was a mess she could clear up.

A buzzing sound from her phone drew her attention away from the wet paper: a text ‘get your act together Jo, you can design a damn good logo but you can’t design your own life’ Reply? No. She turned off the mobile and placed it back on the wooden desk and turned her eyes to the sodden tasks piled in front of her. A glance at the clock informed her that it was 12:23pm, ‘almost time for a drink’, she thought and breathed out a laugh that brimmed with emptiness. Across the page a rainbow of light was cast through the window, to her, in her hungover haze the streak of colour was ethereal, untouchable, celestial. Still, the light just made her headache worse no matter how beautiful it seemed.

“Mum?” She answered the phone with a weariness to her body that was usual on these mornings.

“You said you’d call me.”

“Mum I’m so-”

“You need to pull yourself together Jodie, you promised you’d call.”

“I’m sorry I just got, I got distracted by,” She looked over at the her desk, “by work. I’m really busy at work at the moment.”

“Jodie it’s my birthday. You promised.” The sound of choked back tears down a phone shook Jodie’s body more than the violent retching the night before had. With a trembling hand to match her trembling voice she apologised repeatedly and forced promises from her lips; promises to call again tomorrow, to come round, to do all these things that she had promised a million times before. All these things that she knew she would never do. A smile, sodden with sadness flickered across her lips as she said a goodbye and a love you.

Her desk was battered with pen marks and coffee cup circles that said more about how she slept than she ever could. After a bottle of wine or perhaps half a bottle of whiskey her eyes would droop and she would drop down onto the bed, never made and always side by side with the bucket. It wasn’t as if this was the life she had wanted; as child she had had a list of dreams longer than her list of screwed up relationships (twenty as of yesterday). She had the grades in school at sixteen to become a lawyer and the grades at eighteen to become nothing. A downward spiral more complex than strands of DNA. 

Her phone buzzed again, accompanied by the familiar sound of the ringtone she’d set for her list of ex’s. She knew exactly who it was without having to glance at the screen. “Hello?” She spoke softly as if her words were a sin, “Naomi,” she was cut off by the voice down the phone. “I’m sorry too, I’m really sorry.” Another pause follows. “I know, I know, trust me, I can sort this out, please, I promise I can sort this out.” Six heartbeats passed and then she got an answer and twenty became nineteen, for now.