The elegant sickness in me manifests everyday in different direction. I think about that bitch subletting in my bloodstream and I wonder about scratching my skin to free her. If it were as easy as the trigger that alcohol pulls and if me not drinking were the answer, I would feel healed. But this well-dressed disease has a key to my apartment and flutters around when I’m not there. She sits next to me on BART and announces herself with the indicator-bing of my email arrival.

Her hands are thicker than mine and her wit overpowers me. Sometimes when the lights are off in my room she slithers up next to me and wraps her arm around my pillow. “We’re in this together, you and I,” she whispers and I swear her grey eyes own the truth in that sad little statement. She is the heavy, old backpack I carry and I sometimes wish she could carry me, somewhere other than face down in the driveway of someone who vacation sublets and won’t find me if I don’t wake up. She rolls her eyes at my mother pulling my dead weight off the bathroom floor. She’s glamorous and lights a cigarette with her head tilted in disapproval. She knows best and I’m so uncool.

The sickness declares that I created her or she tries to blame my parents or ex lover for her power over me. She’s got a thousand excuses and talks faster than I can; she tells me that writing about her is cliche and that she’s seen this after school special before. I wish she would whisper and wish her voice wouldn’t carry so far. I hate when she follows me to my neighbors house and acts annoyed when they drink wine without me. She laughs and calls me old lady and she’s not being cute, she wants me to feel like I’m boring her; like I’m boring everyone.

“You’re a drunk!” She shrieks, her eyes wide and excited like she just crowned me Miss America. She tries to make it sound beautiful and natural, like “We’re redheads!” She acts like we’re suddenly best friends and flings her arm through mine wanting me to give up on my pledge to sobriety. She’s convinced that if we drank a bottle of wine right now, after work, no one would ever know. “And fuck them if they do find out!” She doesn’t care, doesn’t think that a 27 year old woman who pays her own bills should have to answer to her perception of my whiny family or protective friends. “They don’t know you in the least!” she laughs and does her best impression of my father, wagging his finger in disapproval.

She doesn’t want to sit here while I write this, she’d rather make a list of people to call. She’s in love with someone who doesn’t love her back and she knows that if we reach out to him and feel disappointed, we’ll have an exciting dilemma on our hands. She wants me to drink and fuck and dance with my head flung back, she sees this as the only part of me that really existed, the only time anyone really took notice. She’s worried everyone has already forgotten who I am.

At night I blast the heater and sleep without covers. I want to stretch out on the bed and know I’m alone. I want to feel her move in me and beside me but I don’t want her to get comfortable. Sometimes, if I’m really tired, I can kick her out of my room to sleep on the couch. She pouts but if I’m having a good week, i don’t care. I’ve been compiling a list of my own, I’ve been thinking about everyday in front of me and planning where I need to go to not feel like a nobody.

I can’t get her to move out, this is a lease that will never expire. I remember she was there during my childhood, while my parents worked, while I sat in my room not wanting to study. She held my hand in fear when I looked down at my pubescent body and realized the ugliness I was now stuck with forever. She’s right, I know, we are in this together, her and I; my sickness and my self. When my aunties tease me about getting married, I roll my glance at her in silence. She sits on my left side eating popcorn. She smirks back. She knows I can’t ever have anyone else; that sometimes the bad things in us are the closest things to home we’ll ever know.