This file contains both "Coming to Terms With It" and "Not Coming to Terms With It"

Coming to Terms With It

She could do this. Humiliation was the price you pay for addiction. She knew that.

She stood by the display of magazines pretending just to browse and not consciously searching out the one. The one she knew was there, the one that was calling out to her, taunting her.

She picked it up, eyes defiant, it didn't matter what they thought. Since when had she cared what they thought.

They might think it meant she didn't have a life. She knew better. She had a life. She had a husband, a house, a car, a job, a firework display to arrange for Saturday night, a plan.

She even had a season ticket to Manchester United, a childhood obsession, that became an adolescent obsession that had followed her into adulthood. She wondered if all obsessions were like that. Once bitten, forever hooked. She worried about that, the withdrawal symptoms might be pretty ferocious when the drug was finally taken away from her. United had come good in the end, she always knew they would. Supporting a football team was an act of faith. The mental editor moved in and crossed out football and scribbled in soccer. It was getting bad, she was even editing her own thoughts now.

She tossed a casual glance over her shoulder and flicked through the pages. She'd hoped it would just be a few lines and a crummy picture. But no, there were pages of it. Too much to memorise in a store, too much to scan quickly into her already overstuffed brain. That meant there would be physical evidence. It would have been ok if there had been no evidence. He would have suspected her of course, but he wouldn't have been able to prove it. So it wouldn't have counted.

She picked up a copy of Scientific American and a copy of the Times and stuffed the offending article between these more acceptable faces of disposable literature. She felt her shoulders droop and her face redden as she approached the cashier. Everyone in the queue knew about her guilt. Not perhaps the details of it, but the fact of it.

Somewhere from the back of her mind she dragged her, 'I'm management, I have no feelings' expression out and put it on her face. It was the one she wore during staff performance reviews. The cashier made no comment. Sensible.

She turned the key in the front door. Good, he wasn't there. She wouldn't have to smuggle it past him. She could read it in peace and safely dispose of it. Dispose of it. The thought made her panic. How? The dustbin ('trashcan', the invisible editor muttered) was a possibility, but that seemed like sacrilege. She heard his car pull into the drive. Her heart was beating too fast and too loud. Quick. She stuffed the magazine behind the cushion.

Why was the article in a kid's magazine anyway? Just Seventeen indeed. DD was definitely not kids' stuff. He was definitely full grown man designed for thirty somethings like herself. She winced, she was way too old to have a crush on someone, especially someone she hadn't even met, especially someone who didn't even play for United. Unbidden the image of him in red shirt and white shorts arrived in her head.

It was impossible. Ridiculous. Unreasonable. She knew the first step on the road to a cure to addiction was admitting the problem. She went to her computer and started to type.

She heard her husband's voice as he thudded upstairs. "Ok. That had better not be another of those X-Files stories because if it is, I'll have to reformat the hard drive."

She typed no more.

Not Coming to Terms With It

The first step is the worst. Says who? Says the Readers Digest Book of quack psychology for one. Hah. What would they know? She'd admitted her addiction, she'd come clean. So, had the addiction faltered, did it now have less power? Hmm, well from how attractive OK magazine was looking right now, apparently not.

She couldn't believe that she'd admitted to the world, or even some fraction of it, that she had bought a copy of Just 17. She couldn't believe that her hand was drifting inexorably towards that copy of OK. The aversion therapy hadn't worked, in fact watching video reruns of old episodes back to back was just making her want to write stories. But she wasn't going to write stories, that was just what they were expecting her to do.

And 'they' hadn't helped. She'd come out of the closet, she'd admitted the shame and the guilt and what had happened? No offers of help and support, no practical guidance, not even the name of a good therapist. Instead she'd had to listen to the deranged (but admittedly, often delightful) fantasies of her fellow sufferers. She'd read the depths that they had sunk to, their pathetic excuses for buying Playgirl, the mothers who had bribed adolescent daughters to obtain teenage magazines on their behalves. All I can say is that you know who you are and you must answer to your own consciences.

It was definitely the wrong time of the month. But then how was she to know that Ok magazine would have DD on the cover? And that they would have a football magazine with an old picture of a youthful George Best alongside a current picture of Ryan Giggs? What was she supposed to do? Not visit the shops? For how long? A week? And what if next week there were other ones? And she didn't doubt there would be.

There was strength in denial and she would be strong. She would ignore the emails that had told her to embrace her addiction and visit a convention. She would walk out of there with no regrets. She would concentrate on higher things.

And she would come back later when her husband wasn't waiting for her outside in the car.

(oops that's another one with no story, sorry, it just sort of slipped out)