Diet vs. Full Sugar

So there's this one night, December 1999 if my memory serves me correctly, and my brother, David, he's going out with Kelly Goodson at the time. A nice girl, one of the special ones - but it doesn't last. They get engaged, then a few months after that my brother starts freaking out, thinks he's got CJD, thinks he's about to die. Panic attacks, I guess they were. Called 999 a few times, convinced his heart had stopped. Annoyed the hell out of all of us. Anyway, Kelly tried her best, stuck around long after any other person would have probably given up. But that's a couple of years away, and tonight they're all over each other. They invite me out, just a few drinks in an Ambleside cafe, but they don't want me to feel like a gooseberry of course so they invite Kelly's best friend Rebecca Dale along with us - y'know, so I feel like less of a charity-case. But Rebecca, she's a couple of years older than me so a double-date is out of the question; it's all just inane conversational pleasantries and such as like, my soul being slowly but surely picked apart.

Anyways, we get to the cafe. Must be about seven in the evening, but the place is dead. A few years later the notion of sitting in a non-alcoholic cafe all night just sipping coke would have made my brother laugh his arse off, his idea of hell - but Kelly's good for him; he seems calm tonight, relaxed. So I'm the anxious one, them three talking to each other about bullshit while I just sit there and kind of zone-out, nothing in my head but static. The waitress takes her time. David and Kelly order a milkshake, two straws, to share between them like those dogs share the spaghetti in The Lady and the Tramp - how bleeding cute, etc, etc. Rebecca orders a coke, an ordinary coke, and I like her for doing that. I order a diet coke, of course. "What do you need to drink diet for?" - etc, etc. Leave me alone. Drink your full-sugar shit and don't even care about the consequences.

Waitress brings our drinks - again, in her own sweet time. I look at their milkshake and I wonder how it tastes. Rebecca starts sipping at her coke, but for some reason I just sit and stare at mine. Can't drink it. Something is troubling me. There's something huge standing between me and the coke. What if the waitress mixed them up? What if Rebecca got the diet and the coke in my glass is full sugar?

Someone, maybe Kelly, after a few minutes she asks me why I'm not drinking it. I know that what I'm going to say is ridiculous, absolutely stupid, but even though I can imagine how silly it will sound I still have to say it, because I know that if I don't I'm going to go fucking crazy, I just can't handle it. I feel like crying. I feel like all three of them are bullying me, laughing at me, and I just want to get out, out of the fucking cafe and away from them and never turn back. I laugh when I say it, like I know I'm just being silly, ha-ha-ha: "What if the waitress got our drinks mixed up?" I say. There, said it. And of course they tell me I'm being ridiculous, of course she didn't mix them up, but then I think it dawns on them that I'm being absolutely serious, because Kelly takes a sip of my drink to test if it's diet or not - she claims to be able to tell the difference - then hands it back, says it's fine.

Fine. Of course it's not fine. I don't believe her. I can't be 100% certain that it's diet and so I don't touch it. Don't care how many times they tell me to stop being stupid and just drink it, I don't need to worry about it, etc, etc - there's only one voice I pay any attention to, those days. So I just leave it. "Someone else can drink it. I'm not thirsty any more." I push it to one side - out of my fucking sight. The very thought of it being full-sugar and me just drinking it without knowing 100% that it isn't is enough to make me cringe, feel fat. To think I nearly drank it without even thinking! Stupid. You're getting careless, the voice says. Must try harder.

We leave, the evening a complete waste of time, the young lovers holding hands, probably resisting the temptation to skip down the street, then Rebecca walking several feet ahead of me - but I don't really care, all I'm thinking is how narrowly I escaped getting fat, ruining all my hard work, losing everything. So I'm happy, really. It's been a good night. And I don't give a damn what Rebecca thinks of me.

Ana's is the only opinion that counts.