The Sad Drunk

I thought alcohol was supposed to loosen your tongue. Especially the kind of schoolies' trip parties. Smooth out the stunted ‘ums’ and ‘ers.’ A kind of grease for the mouth that leaves laughter smeared around your mouth like oil.

A few paper cups of beer. The odd shot of vodka. It has all my friends wrapped around each other on the couch, words drooling down their chins as their faces melt into that weird place between crying and laughing. They look like wax dolls left to sweat in the sun.

“I love you! You are the best girl, the best.”

“Really?”

Their voices dip in and out of italics freely, none of the sounds knowing quite how to stand straight.

All the alcohol has done so far is give me a headache. My brain is scrunched up, wrapped around itself in a ball of clear sticky tape, the type where you can never find the end once it’s all meshed together.

I rub my palms into my eyes. I push them deep, deep enough that they might pop and I’ll live with two empty sockets for the rest of my life. Better that than staring up at the ceiling of this rented apartment anymore. Everything always looks so big when you’re lying on the floor. 

“Hey? Tilly? What’s wrong?”

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

I press my palms deeper. When did the air get so heavy? I can feel it clotting inside my throat. My lungs too. So much damp stale air.

“Thalia, you’re crying. Can you say something?”

Oh no. The alcohol, here it comes - I’m the sad drunk. Great.

One of them is beside me, Trish, kneeling over my face and peeling back my hands. The light spikes through my eyes and I blink, wiping my face.

“I’m fine.”

“I think you need to get to bed. It’s late.”

I drag myself to my feet and walk to the kitchen.

“I’m fine. All I need is water.”

I fill a cup and drink. It doesn’t help.

“I’ll take you up.” Trish stumbles after me and puts her hand on my shoulder.

I drink again before I let her guide me away. The others wave and rub their faces, wiping away their clown-makeup smiles.

---

There’s the long hospital hallway. I skip down it with my dad. I’m too old to skip, the kind when you pretended you’re twirling around a fairy circle or dancing through a pink princess palace. It feels wrong for a hospital hallway. How many gurneys have been wheeled over this floor? How many times did a nurse have to fall back and dab at a speck of blood left behind? I skip anyways.

I know the way to the room, easy enough. It’s the fourth one past the lounge area. We never meet her in the lounge area. Too many people. They're not talking. It’s quiet but for the blaring television showing the latest episode of Mastermind. But they sit in a loud silence, cocooned in brown armchairs waiting for something to change. The channel, the dinners, the overly sanitised taste of dust and dead skin in the air.

Still, I pause outside the room and wait for my dad to join me. I let him open the door and walk in before me.

Inside, he speaks first. “Hi, Leanne.”

“Heya,” I say and lean back on the wardrobe.

My mum finishes watching the last of the weather forecast on the small screen in the room before she turns to us.

“Hello, Russ.” They hug, one arm on the back but eyes averted away.

My dad steps back and glances at me. I hug my mum. Her arms become curled tree roots, locking around me as if I’m a rock on a precipice. I can feel her breathing against me. Thicky, heavy swallows of air.

When we break apart, I return to the wardrobe. My eyes glaze and I stare at the lights on the screen.

My dad talks mainly. He asks about the hospital, the psychologists, how she is. She says she’s going to get better and wrings her fingers. She looks at me with glass eyes.

I smile and nod. I go over and pat her shoulder and say, “yes, take your time.” I try to joke about the food and tell her about one of the facts I learnt today. My dad nods with this; he grins - “Yes, Richard III under a car park. Had a special R for reserved.”

My mum nods and says “oh.”

I feel the universe compressing around me.

She hugs me again before we leave. I open my arms and rub her back while her fingers press into mine. You can tell we’ve done this before. A practised routine. She grips my body, her breathing so loud. I stand there, an animatronic repeating the same actions with dead eyes.

It’s terrible. I am terrible at this.

---

Depression is a dog who likes to sniff at your shoes. A matted black coat. Tongue lolling. Pants with paper lungs.

Walking at your side, he will only tread in your footprints; he is forever your most loyal friend.

---

“Hey, here we go.” Trish walks me towards the bedroom door.

I pull a face, and shake her off. I will not be the sad drunk. A second couch sits in the landing outside the bedroom doors and I walk over to it, sighing loudly as I collapse back into it.

Trish raises her eyebrows, stretches her own lips back to twist her cheeks, before she flops down beside me. Her feet find my lap. I push her off. She kicks back and laughs as I try to push her toes down to the floor. I laugh too, a real one.

At last, she relents, arching her neck back into the cushions of the couch.

“Why were you crying, Tilly?” she asks and presses her forehead into my shoulder. “Why were you sad?”

I shrug and shake my head. “I don’t know.”

“But you’re never sad,” she mumbles. “You never show you’re emotions.”

The universe boils inside my throat.

“You don’t talk, that’s not good. You should talk.”

I shake my head. I might. Maybe. But it feels so shallow. And if I did, if I told someone everything, they would know what I am. A dead animatronic with hollow plastic bones.

Trish headbutts my shoulder. “But you were crying.”

“Yeah.”

“You can talk, y’know.”

“No,” I say. “My stuff, it’s not important stuff. Other people have more stuff.”

“You can still tell me.”

I don’t answer. Instead, I sit there staring at the wall until I feel Trish fall asleep beside me. I sit there still until sunlight splays a hand across the window.

It is a beautiful dawn.