Choose whiskey.

You may not want to spend twenty dollars on a pint of the finer stuff but you’re older now; a fifth feels excessive and a lower grade feels embarrassing. Never mind that you’re unemployed. Never mind your memory of the problem you had once, and then again and then again. Spend your money on the finer stuff. When the boy at the cash register wishes you a good night - is he even 21? - just nod. He’s not looking for a response.

When you get home - which is not home but a cabin you found far away from everywhere - you may or may not consider where is home to you now. If you decide to entertain the idea, you’ll run through where you were born, how you grew up, which social groups you identified with, what you’ve learned in your travels, your textbooks, your experiences that are neither here nor there, when it was that you began to think critically about the things that make you snap.

Or you may decide to not entertain the idea of where home is to you now. A flicker of a thought washes over you, then slides down your arms and into the ground where you stretch into a space that you’ve begun to recognize yourself in. Maybe the air smells like your laundry, maybe you instinctively avoid the creaky floor board, maybe you reach for a glass of water that’s always where you leave it. Maybe home is where you choose to be and where things are as you have them.

At this point you may or may not find yourself slipping into nostalgia. You see it’s still light out, how it’s early to think of the things you long for. There are dishes to do, something to check-in with. Keep sips short. Fold your clothes, debate if you’re hungry enough to make dinner, send the non-obligatory email you’ve kept in the pile of “later.” Feel ordinary.

Or maybe slip into that place, let the whiskey sit in divots of your teeth and curdle your lips. You couldn’t count these times on both hands if you tried. Prod the instability - mental or otherwise - exhilarating, even as it slowly kills you.