Elsie is talking, and Luke is talking, and Olivia is talking. They look like reanimated corpses to me. When I miss a beat, or miss a question, I apologise, emphasising tiredness – a lot on my mind – despite the emptiness inside my head. I work hard to pack away the swarming overwhelm and fear. A huge burger and chips help. I push all of it into me, and let it fill my body. Where else would I put it? And my body revolts. I eat the stress and it makes me feel ill. Leaving the car park, I vow never to come here again. This is the universe trying to tell me: some places are not for me.
The first time I ever got drunk was at the Plaza. Well, in the park behind the shopping centre, but close enough. We pass the park on the drive out, eliciting the memory. A stormwater drain separates the shoppers from the park-dwellers, and we leapt across with glee for the freedom that awaited us. We were fifteen by this point, same-same but different. Poppy and Mara had pooled their money and asked Mara’s brother to buy a bottle of cheap vodka. This was something they had planned together, and decided to bring me in on at the last minute. Year Ten was a strange one for our friendship – we were as close as we would ever be, and further apart than ever. The stakes were growing, which accounted for the discrepancy. We mixed the vodka with orange juice and took turns swigging from the huge plastic bottle, pulp stuck to the sides. It just tasted like orange juice, but it was not long before its effects made their way around my body, loosening every corner. We had told our parents we were going to the movies, and bought ourselves a whole afternoon of freedom. There were a couple of mums with their toddlers on the playground when we arrived, but we soon scared them away with our inebriated shrieking and laughing. The swing set and the slide and the little tunnel we were too big to climb through were ours and ours alone.
‘You’re so going to spew,’ Poppy told me, having all the knowledge and wisdom of someone who had been drunk exactly two times before.
‘I probably will, I vomit all the time,’ I replied.
It was true, I was well acquainted with my gag reflex. Perhaps a doctor might have looked into the possibility of an eating disorder, had they been alerted to the frequency with which I chucked up my guts, but it never occurred to me to mention it to anyone. If anything, I was putting my energy towards making less of a fuss about things. And while it was not directly related to my body image, my sense of self, my idealised form, it wasn’t not related to it either. My view on the matter was: I was sensitive. Sensitive to what I ate, to not eating regularly enough, to fizzy drinks, to too much physical exertion, to stress, to worry, to lack of sleep, to self-loathing that seemed to grow from periods of unrest. Alcohol was another bullet point to add to that list. It was also an elixir when it came to the things I struggled with most, one I had not known I needed until we met and then I could not imagine ever living without. If this was how other people felt all the time, sign me up.
Before I hit my purge point, I fell through a trapdoor from my mind into a version of my body that was dramatically more comfortable than it had been prior. Alcohol had KonMaried the place, ditching any sensations that did not spark joy. Without overwhelm, I felt as though I could feel things more clearly – there was choice, I was in control, though that was obviously the intoxication talking. And she was a wretch, stealing joy from tomorrow to throw a raging party in my newly organised space today. Again, hindsight. In the moment, the sensation that overtook all others was the desire to figure out how to mine my body formorepleasure, how to use it to bring pleasure to others. That was where real power lay. Perhaps alcohol dulling the information overload I was usually navigating at a cerebral level allowed me to jump headfirst into the rapids that were teenage hormones. Maybe vodka and orange juice worked as some odd kind of aphrodisiac. Who knows. But I remember lying in the tan bark and knowing that I needed to fuck. I suddenly understood what had terrified me only a year or two before.
And then I did spew. What felt like bucket-loads of orange liquid was ejected from my stomach into the long grass behind the swing set, as Poppy and Mara fell over themselves laughing. Half an hour later, as I lay recovering in the tunnel, dizzy and weak, Mara spewed too. I should have listened to the message I received from the universe that afternoon: some things are not for you.
12
Icrawl into the comfort of my bed to try and recover the pieces of myself I lost in those drawn-out seconds Maeve was gone. She is upstairs running laps of the deck, playing chasey with Dad, but I cannot shake the sharpness of how it felt to be so wholly responsible for that momentary loss. It will be impossible to ever trust myself again. I lost my niece, and it was only by luck that loss was temporary. It is unbearable to face my own rotten core. Self-flagellation goes around and around on a loop. For as long as I can remember, I have designed for myself these punishment cycles. The expectation is set at perfection, and I can reach that for a little while, with all efforts and focus, but inevitably I make a mistake and I pay a harsh penance for my indiscretion. My self-talk turns rancid and uncontrollable, no sense of scale. Losing Maeve requires the same atonement as, for example, forgetting to reply to someone’s nice text message – not that people send me nice text messages anymore. Insecurity motivates me to start the cycle again, to be perfect until I can’t be. A stable sense of self simply requires never doing or saying a wrong thing again in my life. Easy!
There is a name for it, of course, another acronym, another set of symptoms I had confused for personality traits. My brain is a Venn diagram of issues; there is plenty of overlap. But this one is hard to fully integrate; this one feels like a tidy label pasted over what is actually my logical response to how I am as a person in the world. Maybe for other people, the moral scrupulosity is irrational, excessive, malicious. But for me, it feels right and fair. I reap what I sow; I pay an energetic penalty for all of my failings. This is important to me to think about, to follow through. Perhaps I am trying to counter a profound feeling of being bad by trying to beat it, control it, manage it. It is more likely I am affirming a deep-seated fear. I AM bad. I am the sleeper-agent child who poisons a perfectly acceptable family from the inside, the twisted teenager who wishes innocent girls dead, the broken woman who repels friendships, and fails at anything and everything she tries. I am the corroded self who takes what she wants, whenever she wants it, discarding people when they are no longer of use to me, never to think of them again. I lose precious children, for goodness’ sake. It is little wonder my brain has self-detonated; it is only surprising it took so long.
Yes, this is textbook black and white thinking, but enacting these cycles is the most rational response a person this bad could have. I cannot accept neutral; I cannot help but feel that one step down from a hundred per cent good is bad. I have always done it. Another way to think about it is that I have a lower tolerance for moral greyness than most people I know. And that is not to say I feel morally superior – quite the opposite. What other people seem to be able to endure sends me completely spiralling. I need things to be easy, I need them to be clear. The script of self-admonishment is comfortable and familiar. It is also flexible. I have used it in so many ways that the words can bend to fit almost any context. And people wonder how I fill my unemployed days; if only they knew. Closing my eyes and slowing my breath is almost like sleeping, and I play pretend until it is time to rally for the carols. The inner monologue quietens but does not go away. It never goes away. I am trying to summon more composure in the face of the busy workings of my mind. I do not seem to be able to reduce it in any healthy way, so acceptance seems the only other option.
I have delayed getting ready until there is no time left, and panic motivates me to get up and moving. Assessing the damage, I go a little overboard with liquid blush and make sure my eyebrows are brushed, but the rest is out of my hands. My hair is a bird’s nest, which ushers some level of peace with what it brings to mind, but I cannot look at the hollows under my eyes or the bones across my chest. These accentuate an eerie quality, mirroring the sinister goings-on inside me. At least darkness is in my favour, for how it conceals rather than highlights, and it is built into the framework of the event.
‘Nora, we’re heading off. Are you coming?’
Only Olivia would hint at my attendance being optional, giving me a gentle out should I need it. I join them on the front lawn. Maeve is in her pram, held in by those useless straps. I will not volunteer to mind her tonight; I have stripped myself of that honour. We walk in silence, all depleted in our different ways. Dad says he has a sore back from being up on the ladder. I wish a sore back was the most I had to contend with. The high notes of ‘Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town’ hit our ears as we round the corner to the park. We are not late, but we are not early enough to satiate Elsie, so we pick up the pace. There are picnic rugs patterned across the grass like patchwork, and children weaving through the spaces in between, lit up by the glow sticks in their hands and around their necks. I peruse the contents of the picnics we pass, and feel more connection with the people who seem to have thrown packets from their pantry into a bag, than those with cheeses and mini triangle sandwiches and sweet treats coated in coconut, though I would rather be a guest of the latter people’s gatherings. And that is another perfect summation of the wrongness: being less, while somehow feeling I deserve to be aligned with those who have more. It is enough to turn me off eating entirely.
I am sure if I looked at the faces of those picnicking, I would recognise at least half of them, and perhaps find myself socially obligated to stop and talk to my old primary school teacher or a classmate or the lady who works at the supermarket, so I avoid every eye. The reasons adults move to these kinds of communities are what makes them unbearable places to grow up in. Your mistakes are made in full view, and no one will ever forget the person you were when you were becoming the person you wish to be. It is even harder to be formless but grown, unfinished but eternally vile. People hate that, as they should. Anonymity is not an option, and making a good impression on people has never been one for me either.
‘This is a nice spot – not too loud for Maeve, but still a good view,’ Elsie announces, spreading the red plaid, plastic-backed picnic rug in front of her without waiting for a second opinion.
She has chosen well: it is a good distance back from the stage, but not so much that we are unable to see the facial expressions of the presenter currently holding the microphone. People begin to come over to say hello. Youngest child is a ranking low enough to avoid most interactions if I so wish, especially when people want to skip right past me to say hello to Maeve. Baby of the family is a title I am more than happy to hand over. And rather than actually engaging, I dream up a scenario where I might be forced to converse.
‘Long time, no see. What have you been up to?’ someone asks.
‘Oh, you know, I’ve been busy coming to terms with being fundamentally unsound on a spiritual and possibly even cellular level,’ I reply.
Even my imagined small talk could use some work. Olivia unpacks the picnic basket as she talks animatedly to an older man I do not recognise, who thankfully does not try to engage me in any real dialogue.
‘Drink,’ Olivia says, still talking, handing me a plastic flute full of bubbles.
Christmas is a time people seem to hand you drinks without asking whether you would like to have one or not. Being sober is another one of those choices that tends to make people uncomfortable, so I am glad not to have to cross that conversational bridge with my family this year. They are barely handling autistic – sober as well would be taking the piss. Future Nora can deal with that. I throw the drink back in one mouthful and welcome the shift. By the time the president of the community organisation that runs the event is welcoming people through the crackling PA, I have had a few more glasses, so I am halfway to floating and ready for bed. Dad sips slowly from his beer, performing active listening and conversation non-participation as a mark of respect. Luke has taken over the fun aunt/uncle role and is ripping out grass to sprinkle on Maeve’s legs as she giggles and kicks it off. I watch him turn the game into a lesson on counting, as though fun cannot be enjoyed for fun’s sake. He seems more focused on imparting his wisdom than on engaging with the wisdom receiver. He also seems happy, which is pleasant to witness. The next performance is from the primary school choir. We all need a little more alcohol to get through their five chosen songs.
‘We were never that bad, were we?’ Luke asks, projecting his voice far more than necessary.
I assume there are parents of some of the children within earshot and try to avoid engaging with the unnecessary slander.
‘They need to work on their harmonies, that’s for sure,’ Mum agrees.
‘Nora?’
Fran is standing behind Elsie, hands in his pockets. I stare without response.
‘Hey, Fran, great to see you, honey. Are you having a nice Christmas?’ Mum takes the reins.
‘I am, thank you, Mrs Byrne. And you?’
‘It’s been lovely; having all my children home under one roof is a miracle.’
