Chapter 11 #2
The void between someone who has glimpsed tragedy and someone who is unaware is impossible to explain, so I can no longer make small talk with Olivia now either.
Maeve is happy enough to sit next to Santa for the photo – apparently on his lap is no longer a thing – and we do one photo of the three of us that we think Mum and Dad might like for a laugh.
My face looks haunted, and Olivia thinks it is the funniest thing.
Strange how my smile makes her mad, but my fear makes her laugh.
This is not really the truth, but I feel like believing it anyway, on account of the unfolding badness all around.
I buy books for everyone on autopilot, thankful I made a list. By the time we meet the others for lunch, I am ready to disintegrate.
Lunch drags out three glasses of wine long, and Maeve is the only thing that keeps me whole.
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 for more pleasure, 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.