Intoxicate

|1| Drunken Thoughts.

|Thinking Out Loud - Ed Sheeran|

Baylee

It's 5am and I'm currently watching back to back episodes of adventure time on the TV downstairs.

It's at times like these that I realise how pathetic my life is.

After suffering through yet another sleepless and tossed night, only two hours ago I had made my way downstairs.

Of course, I made a traditional stop at the kitchen on the way, piling my arms full with junk food that is just a toxic as the cigarettes that I abuse each day.

Already sick of adventure time, I arise from the uncomfortable plaid couch that takes up most of the living room and make my way back to the kitchen, this time in search for alcohol.

My hands and feet move automatically, as if they have been doing this routine every morning for centuries, instead of a couple of worn years.

It's not long before I find a half filled bottle of whiskey, most likely left over from my drunken endeavours last Thursday night.

I still don't remember a thing, only the silent treatment my mother gave me for the next few days after she found me passed out on the couch, bottles strewn around me, and the lounge window covered in smudged lipstick. Good times.

The rest of the morning is spent drinking off my pain. Slowly though, intaking just enough liquor to keep me properly buzzed, as I have a tedious work shift in the afternoon.

I awake on the couch in a haze. The light flooding in from the lounge window blinds me as I sit up. I groan and drag myself unwillingly off the couch. Of course, this only resulted in me tumbling to the floor in a messed up heap and landing with a loud thump that must have echoed to China and back.

My groan and the mumbled words that followed my first incident of the morning are under strict explicit reference.

I push myself off of the hard floor and drag myself upstairs, my doona being pulled behind me.

I enter my bedroom (cave) and collapse not the bed, running through my frazzled mind a list of things I have to do for the day.

1. Work.

2. Date with Carter.

1) My work is probably the only thing in my life keeping me alive. Emotionally and financially.

It's nothing major, most would be ashamed to be caught working at a florists. It's the complete opposite of what people would expect me to do, but it suits me well. And it's all I have.

My own mother neglects me, about as rarely seen as a sabre tooth tiger, and just as prickly. It's through no fault of her own though. After my dad went missing she shut the wold out. She didn't talk for months. After a few years, sick of my emotional and drunken rampages, she moved out, leaving me with this house, saying "I can't handle you anymore".

No, my father didn't leave. Leaving would imply packed suitcases by the door and early morning cab calls in hushed tones. He just simply vanished. We filed a missing persons report, but nothing was ever done about it. One day he was there, and the next he wasn't. Nobody even knows if he's still alive.

That was 7 years ago.

2) Carter is my boyfriend of three months. If I had to describe Carter in a number of words I would say

• Caring

• Curious

Carter is unbelievably caring. It can be a little suffocating at times though.

He constantly worried if I'm okay, if I'm eating well, if I'm feeling alright. It drives me insane.

Beside that, he's curious, constantly asking me about myself, my family, my future, and the black hole of the conversation; my past.

I don't like to talk about my past, and he should have gotten that by all the witchy vibes I've been giving off to him lately. The past is a dark place, and trying not to be incredibly cliche, it's where my demons are.

For my mother and me, the past is like the elephant in the room. Obviously there, never talked about.

I lay on the bed for a few more moments, before heaving myself to my feet and taking a long, cold shower to shake the headache away before my afternoon shift.

*** Nina Dobrev plays Baylee ***