What if Drinking is the Sane Choice?
And if so, how do you deal with reality without alcohol?
Baby bird
When I was six I found a pink and featherless baby bird that had fallen from its nest. I’d never seen anything so sad or so beautiful, and I was transfixed. Its beak moved like it was asking for help.
I’d been told off for touching creatures before and so I picked the bird up using the bottom of my t-shirt, and snuck it up to my room.
By the time I delicately unrolled my t-shirt, the bird was dead. Its soft beak was no longer moving, tiny perfect apostrophe nostrils completely still.
Its big black eyes were still covered by a layer of skin. It had never even gotten the chance to see the world. Tiny, defenseless, barely out-of-the-egg. Its first experience had been to fall a long way. To land, hard, on the earth. To be left to die, alone, on concrete.
I wrapped the bird in toilet roll and hid it in my pant drawer. It was too precious to bury. Too important to risk telling anyone.
Hello cruel world
From the very start, the world is crueler than you would like, and you just have to get used to it. But what if you can’t?
