Why I’m convinced I will win the lottery
Bethan Williams is convinced that one day, she will win the lottery. Here’s her heartbreaking true story.
My name is Bethan Williams and I’m convinced I’m going to win the lottery. This is not a joke but a genuinely serious fact about me.
Like most people, I bought my first lottery ticket after my 16thbirthday. I took the process very seriously: I spent a long time choosing my numbers and actually walked to the shop to buy a real paper ticket. Not surprisingly, I didn’t win. So incensed was I by this injustice, that I proclaimed the whole thing to be a waste of time and money and didn’t play again. I thought that would be the end of my lottery journey, but things haven’t quite turned out that way.
Let’s backtrack, for a moment. I come from a family of lottery fans. My parents are casual subscribers; they buy Euromillions tickets when the jackpot is big enough to be on the front page of the Daily Mirror and my dad has a direct debit subscription to the National Lottery that generates a lucky dip ticket every week. My grandparents took things a step further. They both had special numbers that they played religiously, twice a week. After they died, my uncle was so consumed by the fear that their numbers might one day be drawn that he saw no choice but to take them on and now plays both sets alongside his own. Twice a week. Religiously.
After my own disappointing foray into the world of lotto, I scorned such fanatical behaviour and became one of those people who annoyingly quotes the “more likely to be struck by lightening” fact (seriously. Be quiet. No one thinks you’re funny.) But now, fast forward eight years and I am a card carrying member of the lottery fan club.
I’m not really sure what happened. I can’t remember a ‘eureka’ moment when I suddenly decided that playing the lottery was for me. I know that I first started idly dreaming about winning when I moved away to university. I was missing the luxury of a fridge that filled itself and so I began to think how nice it would be to, say, win a few million and buy a bottle of wine that cost more than £3.99. There was, at this point, only one problem: I still didn’t play the lottery.
The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that this wasn’t just some pipe dream. No. I was destined to win. It was just going to be a fact of my life. I expressed this idea to my boyfriend — I think I told him that I could “feel it in my bones” — and we proceeded to have the only real argument we’ve ever had in our four-year relationship.
“YOU DON’T EVEN PLAY THE LOTTERY!”
He was, I conceded, correct and so I set out the fix that problem. I logged onto the National Lottery website and set up my own direct debit. Not being a complete heathen, I did draw up some initial lottery playing rules and parameters that I have stuck to rigidly. I would only buy one ticket a week, spending £10 a month (a perfectly reasonable amount.) I would, however, allow the special purchase of a Euromillions ticket when the jackpot became too big to ignore. I wouldn’t choose numbers; the fear of somehow missing a week and seeing my numbers drawn was too much to bear and so I opted for the safer lucky dip option.
I also decided I had to get serious about the question “what would you do if you won the lottery?” I had to plan appropriately and make sure I was deserving of my forthcoming win. This ridiculous scheming has, over the course of the last few years, evolved into my having a detailed plan for several different scales of lottery win. I know exactly what I’d do with a conservative one million pounds; I know what I’d do a middling-but-acceptable 26 million pounds; and, most importantly, I know what I’d do with my ultimate dream lottery win of 56 million pounds.
There’s no question you could ask to which I don’t know the answer. How much is each family member going to get? Sorted. Where will I live? Sorted. Which supermarket will I start to frequent for my weekly shop? Sorted. I continually badger my friends and family with the question “what would you do if you won the lottery?” before immediately ignoring their answers and sharing my own detailed plans instead. I use a person’s opinion on the lottery as a barometer by which I judge new acquaintances.
And so, roughly five years since I committed to a life of lottery, I have won exactly once, using a ticket that I did not buy. My uncle (the one from earlier, with the three sets of numbers) had slipped a ticket inside my 22ndbirthday card and I won £25. The day before, I had told my colleagues at the bank in which I was spending my gap year that I was going to win. The draw was on my birthday! I could feel it in my bones! Whilst this may not have been the grand windfall that I predicted, I have never lost faith. Yes, it’s been five years. Yes, I’ve spent much, much more than that £25 on tickets. But I still believe. I can feel it IN MY BONES.
I recently encountered an incredibly serious problem when, six months after moving to London for my MA, I found myself bereft of savings and struggling to afford things like food and rent. I therefore had to make the heart-breaking yet admirably sensible decision to cancel my direct debit. But, rest assured, this hasn’t dampened my spirit. Last week I found two pounds on the floor and I used it to buy a ticket. (I didn’t win.) When there is spare change in my purse, I will forgo a sugary treat in the corner shop and buy a ticket. When the ever-present feeling is just too strong to ignore, I will buy a ticket.
A lot of people like to snigger at the lottery for a lot of different reasons. It’s a futile game that the working-class plough their money into without ever seeing any return. It’s for stupid people who don’t understand odds and reason. It’s just as bad as other forms of gambling and should be banned. My friend Hattie once sent me into a spiral of doubt and concern when she informed me that I couldn’t be a good socialist if I didn’t give the majority of my winnings away in an attempt to further the cause. I eventually cleared my conscience by deciding that, if and when the socialist revolution occurs, I’d step up and do my bit with my remaining winnings. Otherwise, I’ll probably just hang on to that £56 million for safekeeping.
Despite all of this bad press, I have somehow found myself at a point in my life where I will proudly say: I love the lottery. I know exactly how stupid and futile believing in the lottery is and yet I do it anyway. Writing this article, I visited the winners page of the National Lottery website and found that I was so happy for all of those people. Look at those smiling faces! See how grateful and overwhelmed they all are!
Yes, I wish we lived in a world where everyone had everything they needed and capitalism and Tory governments weren’t a thing and we could erase systematic inequality forever. I’m on board with the socialist revolution, I really am! But, until then, I’m going to keep spending my spare £2s on a lottery ticket and I’m going to keep dreaming. Because it’s silly, and it’s fun and “what would you do if you won the lottery?” is a really great question to ask people at parties. (Unless they’re socialists.)
Originally published at abstractmag.com on February 25, 2015.
