Day 14: A room with a three-bar fire

I have never lived alone before, I feared I would drink my self to death in there.

But I had to move out of my shared place and, knowing that I am not going to drink, have come around to the idea. So today I moved into a bedsit above a pub (I know, but there's a pub or off licence on every corner) beside the canal in Hackney Wick - equidistant between the Olympic Stadium and a massive Big Yellow self storage facility.

When I cycled down to view the place - just five days ago - I felt excited. The area is somewhere between industrial and urban and changing so fast that Google Maps is not a reliable navigator. There are odd little cafes and galleries popping up between the construction yards, squats and newly-built blocks of flats, everything operating under the spectre of Summer 2012. (I'm trying to ignore the fact that I might be a cliche, I read an article the other day 'An open letter to the hipster': "So what to do? Where to go next? (And please don't say 'Hackney Wick')".)

When I started properly writing diaries - age ten or so - I imagined one days having so many that they'd be piled up along the wall, with my typewriter* on the floor. And when I was 14 or 15 I read an article in Bliss / Just 17 (?), 'lives of the stars', which had photos of Donna** from Elastica's and Shampoo's London flats and imagined my own place as being a cross between the two. I used to listen to Elastica's first album again and again vaguely hoping "one day I'll have my own bedsit and emotional problems in Camden". Now I'm living the dream.

It was satisfying to unpack my books and hang up my clothes, surrounding myself with all my favourite trinkets without anyone else's annoying taste in DVDs or cutlery. Mismatched plates, dense literature, heart-shaped boxes and a jug of daffodils.

I think part of me just hates mediocrity: I'd rather live on a farm on the edge of a Scottish island or an inner-city bedsit than the suburbs. I want to have dramatic success or fail beautifully. I've been wondering if I had been more successful in my chosen career then I would have continued trying to be a 'functioning alcoholic'. The answer is 'probably' - although I didn't and I wasn't.

I am feeling more like myself, more confident. I mean, I've even unlocked my Twitter account. I am Curlew and I'm an alcoholic: I am unemployed, broke, single, in rehab, living in a tiny room and happier that I have been in years.

* Laptop
** Now a Born-Again Christian following a skag problem

[When the van left earlier, the sun was shining and the stress of the move was pumping round my body, I really wanted a drink. Just one (hahaHAHA) pint of lager. It was the exact set of circumstance that led me to break my ten-day attempt at sobriety in January. But I sat and breathed and thought about everything - the last two weeks, the future, the stupidity - and got through the craving.]