Tipping Point by Dinuka Mckenzie

Author:Dinuka Mckenzie [Mckenzie, Dinuka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

THEN

I know he’s started to guess. I can tell by the way he yields control when we’re intimate. How he makes no comment when I turn on a night light when we go to bed. Complete darkness is not an option. He hasn’t suggested we visit home in over a month now. I thought I had managed to cover up my little panic attack at the pub that last weekend, stumbling outside in a cold sweat on the pretence of needing a smoke, but apparently not.

Plus, I know he’s been on the phone to her, getting advice, planning and devising. I can guess their subject. Yet another round of counsellors, clinics and rehab programs. Good luck finding one that we can afford. The Medicare cow has been squeezed so dry, its teats are chapped and sore. And yet here I am, still trying to convince myself that this toke, this pill, this glass will definitely be my last. Definitely.

He wants an explanation. They both do. Something neat and tidy that they can fix. Why are you like this? What has made you this way? Why won’t you let us help you? Just talk to us.

Platitudes and wishful thinking. The truth does not set you free. It just creates more complications. They think they want to know because they believe my problems will not affect them. That my Pandora’s box will have no bearing on their lives, or friends or memories. It’ll just help cure me, with no collateral damage. But that’s bullshit. Because of course it’ll capsize the comfortable stasis of their lives. My problems will suddenly become theirs. Tainting their recollections and forcing them to question, to choose and sever. It’s easier this way.

And what makes them think I want to talk about any of it? If half a dozen counsellors have failed, why do they think I’d want to vomit up that ugliness onto them? I can barely face it myself, and never sober. I have spent a lifetime running away. Only succumbing, when a random trigger takes my body hostage, stripping away the years in a millisecond. All it takes is a smell, or a look, or an unexpected touch. Like the other day at Coles, when a man stepped a beat too close, reaching for a packet of Twisties in the chip aisle. His proximity, bulk and body odour working to instantly upend my world. My brain cramping and my flesh seizing up like cement. My world narrowing to a suffocating square meter of space inside a supermarket. Reduced to shallow panic-breathing until control resurfaced. Some old biddy having to ask me to move because I was blocking the aisle.

Only in moments of deep relaxation can I go back there. Under the trance of a needle, when the chemical high both breaks down my barriers and cocoons me from the pain.

Once upon a time, I hooked up with a guy at a party. My friends wanted to move on to a different venue, but I was having fun and decided to stay.

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