‘Let’s go home, Maeve needs to get to bed,’ Olivia replies, and she marches ahead.
‘I’m not tired,’ Maeve protests through sleepy eyes.
By the time we get to the top of our street, Maeve is asleep. Mum’s jaw is set and Olivia is walking at a languid pace. I do not know what to think. About these people, about this week.
‘Well, that was a fun night,’ Luke says in his broadcast voice.
Olivia stops again.
‘Has anyone, ever, in your entire life, told you that not talking is an option?’ she asks. ‘You know that you can shut the fuck up any time, for free, right?’
I want to laugh and I want to cry. It is almost comforting to see the cracks starting to spread; this breach of normality no longer starts and ends with me. There is tension elsewhere, under the surface of other smiling faces. I would rather the group at least acknowledges it. First, we need to name the problem, folks. These momentary flecks of truth unable to be contained are seeds I wish to plant. Yes, it can be messy, and my body does not know how to react when someone steps outside the lines of our family’s social contract. But I could adjust, we all could. It no longer works for any of us to pretend every dysfunctional, dysregulated moment does not exist or is someone else’s fault, because keeping up appearances is a Ponzi scheme, destined for collapse. Perhaps there is hope in that. Anything is better than feeling like the only person who is aware of the atmospheric pressure changes or the poisonous gas seeping in. I am the dead canary, and it would be nice if people stopped telling me to make more effort to fly.
The memories are bubbling up now, as though I have inadvertently tapped an aquifer that cannot be contained until the whole world is under water. Unfathomably, by the following February, I was living on campus in Melbourne, starting my first year of university in an unknown city, studying for a Bachelor of Science – a degree with many elements I did not understand. Fran had said the choice made sense to him – I loved birds – back when I had been planning to study a lot closer to home. I probably stuck with it far longer than I otherwise would have because of his words, and his belief in them, even after I carved him out of my life and fled.
It makes no sense to me now that I did not speak to him about what had happened, with Elsie or between the two of us. Not a single conversation, or even a text. We were perfect, and then I disappeared from view. Sometimes I want to scream at my past self for how poorly she handled things, to take that version of me and shake her as hard as I can by her shoulders. Do better; be better. But hating her will not aid the finding of me now; it may even be part of what is stalling the process.
The best I can surmise about that time is that I had deprioritised my own interests and desires to the point I could not identify them anymore – far more important to be attuned to what other people might want from me. I had to stop being bad and start being good. I let my life be led by group consensus, and a clean slate was utterly irresistible. There was pressure at home to make something of myself, to choose a degree or a TAFE course or a job, and this made as much sense as any of the other options. I had talked it through with my parents before I graduated high school and they had helped me with the enrolment paperwork. Brisbane was my first choice, Melbourne my third. Dad felt some kind of way, as though his birdwatching with me as a child had paid off, and Mum seemed to be letting out one permanent exhale of relief. She had done her duty; she had succeeded in her role. All she had wanted was for me to be a finished product that reflected well on her craftsmanship.
After New Year’s, I had announced my desire to study interstate rather than in Brisbane, and they had helped again with the extra paperwork that brought. The funds were there for on-campus living and I wanted to unburden everyone of my care. I ploughed ahead without thinking, too tired to think, as though that is any kind of way to live. I floated so as to avoid having to plant my feet in any one choice.
Promising to return for Christmas, if not before, I hopped on a flight and stared out of the window, dissociating, from take-off until landing, as if partaking in some kind of thought experiment and not an actual interstate relocation. Living in a dorm was lonely, though perhaps not any lonelier than living anywhere else in that kind of mind-frame. I find it hard to know how I feel about certain life choices when the act of choosing means I do not get to try any of the other options. Everything is relative; this might have been the start of the worst time of my life, and also the best possible version of that same time. And I did not even feel as though I had chosen this; it felt instead like one of my extended daydreams or something I had read about in a book.
Fran still had a year left at school, and sometime after his hospital stay but before Christmas we had agreed we would apply for the same university in Brisbane, so as to be together again in twelve short months. I remember that is what he said – ‘twelve short months’ – but one month is not short, and twelve felt as though it might as well have been a lifetime. Melbourne had not even been mentioned. And then there I was. The first-year student accommodation was small, smaller than a hotel room, with a single bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and a bathroom I shared with one other person. Its saving grace was the corner window that at least allowed me to look out at the trees lining the street, and welcomed in a beautiful amount of light. Going back to my room after a class felt like I was a toy being packed away in my box for the night. Being in my box meant I did not have to exist, and finding the capacity to leave, to wholly exist again, became increasingly difficult. I started skipping non-compulsory lectures, and doing as much as I could from my computer, and my bed. I was not getting the full university experience, because I was not capable of the full human experience.
Homesickness was a constant, though I forced myself to stay away until Christmas, as promised. I did not want to give the impression I was failing. That first holiday season, I did not see Fran – he had gone to Vietnam with his family to celebrate his graduation, Elsie filled me in. Home just a week, I spent a lot of time in my room. Being a science-degree-studying university student, my parents understood my need for recharging. This was a time to sleep and eat and rest my mind. Mum would cook for me, and bring me an excessive number of cups of tea. I was not exactly verbally responsive, but I understood how lucky I was to have this, to have her.
My mind does not have much more to offer here, instead jumping forward again. In my second year, I eventually made one new friend – bright, big-hearted, big-haired Cleo. She was the kind of person who radiated goodness out of her bouncy curls and round, smiley face, who dressed in bright colours and patterns as if her goal was to spread cheer to those around her in as many ways as she could. Though we gravitated towards one another in our lectures because we were the only two sitting alone, she was the one I would have chosen out of any of them, if I had been up for choosing. She made me want to leave my box. When she began asking about my home, my family, and my life, I told her about Fran, in dribs and drabs, at the start of lectures or over after-class coffees lying on the grass. She seemed to get the idea pretty quick.
‘It sounds like you’re soulmates,’ she whispered, during a lecture on cell biology.
‘We are, or we were. I don’t know,’ I replied, preferring to put it out of my mind.
‘Twin flames, maybe. Ugh, I love it, it reminds me of this book I’m reading . . .’
Cleo let me borrow her notes and brought us snacks and bent herself in one hundred other ways to cater to my needs, while I barely registered what hers even were. She became my emotional support person, and I her pet project. I did not ask her to do that, and perhaps I should have etched out more of a conversation about it, with boundaries that I had not learned to understand or set, but she did not ask what I wanted, or for what she wanted from me, either. I got comfortable in the dynamic, as though she was my assistant, or an extra piece of my brain added especially to keep me on track. In my mind, if she needed more from me, or to do less for me, she would let me know. I also grew to feel that she was good for giving, and I was bad for taking, which influenced our relationship dynamic from its origins, giving me a lane that I trained myself to stay in. Enacting the role of the bad friend allowed me to continue judging myself and feeling bad, which was ultimately my goal.
Things are running on fast-forward now, my next Christmas ready to play. I saw Fran once, his being home from Brisbane overlapping with my return to Queensland by about five days. I cannot recall how we reconnected, though I am sure it was through his kindness rather than any attempt on my behalf. I remained a ghost and he allowed me to haunt him, just a little. We went op-shopping, where I bought some 1970s cotton dresses and he picked up a pair of leather loafers pre-softened by years of wear. There was no direct conversation about anything that had happened between us, or the distance that had grown both emotionally and in terms of kilometres, in the time since then. Life continued on, me too messy to address it, Fran perhaps too scared. I had just got my licence, having taken the test on my second day home, and so we drove around a bit, dissecting the people and streets of our town, never touching anything closer to home.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, I desperately wanted to find a way to reconnect. It felt important that he understood why I had failed him so badly, but I did not have any insight to share, and shame spooked me out of every moment when I might otherwise have been inclined to self-reflect. So I made peace with treasuring whatever pieces of himself he still wanted to give me. Or, that is what I told myself. I preferred not to think about it either way. I preferred especially not to think about what he must think of me.
‘Do you ever think about dying?’ I asked Fran as we pulled out of the op-shop car park, heading next for a hike at the waterfall.
‘I guess, sometimes. Do you?’
‘All the time.’
‘Like, you want to die?’
I saw him in my peripheral vision, looking at me with down-low eyebrows and too much concern.
‘Not really. Not actively. I’m okay, I promise,’ I reassured him, hoping we could skip past this part to get to what I really meant.
‘Then how do you think about it?’
‘I wonder what it will be like. I wonder when it will happen. I wonder when it will happen for every person I care about. Like, will my mum die first or my dad? My brother or my sister?’
‘Okay, yeah, I think about that too. Sometimes I can’t sleep because I imagine Ranger dying and how awful that’s going to be,’ he said.
