“Glenfidich, clean.”
“I’m going to have to see an ID. I mean, anyone who orders a Glenfidich probably has drank a time or two in their life, but you look kind of young.”
I flashed my license, she responded in a quick nod and vanished into some back area out of view. My vacant stare scanned the activity of the airport terminal. I had gotten three hours sleep, and in the midst of my loose focus, all of the crowds flowed by in bright blurs.
The cling of the glass behind me signaled the arrival of my best friend. I smiled at the server, nervously nursing the bitter edges of my scotch. It went down smooth in fuller gulps, a rich burn igniting every axon of my weary brain.
“I need help.”
“You want to know sadness? Try losing a child, see if that’s more depressing to you.”
I let the memory dangle loosely in the air for a moment, self hatred welling up somewhere at the base of my consciousness. Depression is, after all, something you pull your bootstraps up to get over.
“Get over it!”
I remember looking at my father in a dull haze, fighting the urge to tell him that I had tried to asphyxiate myself with a plastic bag earlier that day. Of course I was saved by a tattered hole that I only found by the mocking sunlight peeking through my window on the other side. I shifted nervously, grasping for a cigarette pack in some OCD tick; it wasn’t there.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. If I could be different, I would. I would do it in a heart beat. I don’t want to be like this…”
Depression is a charming mistress that grows jealous any time you try to get away. The universe seems to have a penchant for helping her rage.
“Do you want another?”
“What?”
“Another Glenfidich?”
” Yes, please.”
I ran my finger around the edge of my glass, trying to push my depression away. Digital numbers winked the time at me from beside my cocktail napkin. I pressed cancel on the silent alarm of my phone. I had to be at my gate soon. At least the drink relaxed me.