ONE Last Chance

I didn't know I could run. I mean, I knew I could run, but I didn't know I could really run. The mad dash kind of run, where you huff, and you puff, your lungs burning as people fade into a blur of shapes and colours in the distance. The kind of run you can only summon out of your legs when you snooze your alarm one too many times before an early morning flight to your hometown for your only sibling's wedding. Wading through the melee, the only thought on my mind was you have to make it - you have no choice but to make this flight. It wasn't even a choice really. I knew I had to make amends with a family I had all but denounced and relegated to radio silence and an occasional Facebook like on a new profile picture. I had to do better with my sister, who true to her name, had extended an olive branch I wholly didn't deserve, and would surely find a way to destroy.

I wasn't a sight for sore eyes. A lanky, six-foot something sack of clanking bones, with thinning grey hair and eyebags deeper than the bottom of the Atlantic that turned my face sullen and added 15 years. I was still in last night's clothes after a long night of enjoyment with the two friends I still had, that had left me in a drunken stupor. Thankfully, the all-black hoodie camouflaged any stains and spills of night's past. But neither that, nor my dark-wash distressed Levi's could mask the overwhelming stench of shame and blended whiskey that wafted out of every pore in my body.

When I made it to the check-in desk, nine minutes to spare, I recalled our short-lived phone call a month and a half ago. It was the first time I'd heard my baby sister's voice in so many months, we'd both lost count. Or I stopped counting, and she got tired of doing it for us both. I had called, and she didn't bother to spare me the one-way ticket to guilt-ville by disguising the shock in her voice. She had sent the wedding invite to my email, after trying to reach me every which way for weeks, to no avail. I saw the email three days later, when looking, nay, hoping for any "Congratulations, we are happy to move forward..." messages from any one of my many recent applications. After we'd exchanged pleasantries, and I'd said congratulations, we found we had nothing but silence to fill the silence. And so the call ended. Quick. Too quick. Too impersonal to even be likened to a business call. Despite this, she'd followed up with a text a few minutes after.

"Thanks for reaching out Oscar. I hope you come. I'd love for you to speak too. x"

With almost an hour to kill until boarding time, I needed to find somewhere to write my big speech. It would surely be underwhelming, and would do nothing to lessen the burden I felt of having her always looking up to me as her older brother, and me always disappointing. Every time she looked up, I looked away. I had tried to spare her. I knew it would only be a matter of time until her admiring glances turned into inquisitive ones, searching for a future I had no plans for. Then those always became disapproving ones, for all the perceived potential I had laid to waste. Then it became quiet resignation and eventually, indifference. It wasn't a burden I wanted her to carry too.

Olive wasn't the golden child, I was. She'd had to take on the role like one of my old hand-me-down t-shirts when my spiral hit full force 2 years after university. I was 25, she was almost half that, and too young to bare the weight of the expectations our neurotic, type A, STEM-loving parents had. Yet, she maintained such grace, I had no choice but to be incredibly envious. She was always so patient, and so, so optimistic - in that nauseating, rose-coloured glasses way that made everyone else feel ungrateful and inadequate. So she continued to surpass expectations - graduated at 20, Masters by 23, changing the world with a leading NGO at 25, and engaged at 26 to a dull, somewhat snooty man with a high-powered corporate job. Soon it would be white picket fences and grandbabies our parents could rewrite history with. Nothing had ever managed to drain her optimism, and even I hadn't yet exhausted her patience.

The little, back-breaking, barely-balancing bar stools are what eventually called my name. It was more likely the booze, but who's keeping tabs? I sure wasn't. After all, I'd need my fair share of liquid courage to get through the weekend. It didn't matter that it was 7.45 in the AM. And so one glass turned into four, and still, I felt nothing. The knots in my stomach hadn't loosened, the nerves hadn't calmed, and the buzz from the brewing storm in my head only grew louder.

As I sat there, and the drinks flowed, my thoughts became entirely consumed by the microcosm around me. I sat there in silent admiration and pure bewilderment. Everyone was off to somewhere, and they all seemed to have things together. Not just their bags or their airport fits, but their lives, their friends, their families. It all looked so put together.

The couple to my left, cheersing their bright-yellow mimosas, her red ruby ring glinting every time it caught the light. I'd heard talk of a honeymoon, of photos on a beach somewhere, and seen their palpable excitement of getting away for a few weeks in the sun together. I'd also seen their love. His eyes glued to her big brown ones, her hanging on to his every word. They seemed so consumed, so enamored, that for the entirety of that hour, they didn't notice my existence. They didn't even feel the glare of my stares, as I burned holes into the back of her braids.

The young girl, talking hurriedly on her phone as she walked past the bar to a different terminal, telling her mum her every move. "Yes mum, I have everything...No, I'm not late...Tell dad to relax, he's sent enough texts, and most of them are just emojis...Yeah, I found Abby, eventually...I can't wait to be home too..."In her eyes, I saw a glint of something so unmistakable, so undeniable - the contentment of concern. The laboured exasperation in her voice couldn't hide that feeling, when you know someone is waiting for you, thinking about you, concerned about your well-being.

I instinctively looked down at my own phone, knowing no one would call. Nobody would ask if I'd made it to the airport, there would be no wishes for a safe flight. In fact, I knew nobody believed I would even show up.

When I dreamed as a child, I didn't dream of being the black sheep of the family. Not just my family, but the black sheep of the entire extended family. The one everyone whispers about in hushed tones as they shake their heads. I saw a bright future, love, family, and had an ambition that knew no bounds. I was an A-student throughout, and not in the way all our parents say they were. I actually was. Honour roll, Dean's List, the whole nine yards. It ended with me becoming an out-of-work physicist who turned to jobs in anything, and everything. The STEM thing was more than likely me trying to appease my parents, but also a natural career path for someone who'd never really been passionate about any one thing. Being an academic over achiever didn't leave much room to explore passion projects and discover talents. So, I just picked something, and hoped I'd be able to go into research like my mother, and solve a few world problems in the process.

After uni, I'd found work as a teacher, but I wasn't cut out for high-school kids with my under-developed social skills and chronic need to do earth-shattering things, so that lasted all of a few months. I'd bounced around after that, trying to find something with purpose. If not for me and my big dreams, then at least to appease my parents who'd worked their whole lives to see their kids find success. Eventually, the job offers trickled down to an occasional rejection email every few weeks or an interview where I couldn't explain away the professional gaps, and I stopped looking in the field and started looking to pay my bills. That's when the drinking, the real drinking (not a few beers with friends on the weekend, but weekly binges and shots of whiskey to jumpstart the day) started. And now, at 39, with no visible career prospects, no wife, no kids, a family I barely speak to, even the drinking wasn't enough to fill the void left by the deep sorrow of disillusionment.

The boisterous, very visually mismatched, group of three young men chatting by the coffee shop, warming their hands with the mugs and wafting the steam away into the crisp morning air, broke me out of my melancholic ruminations. They were so engrossed in conversation, I wished I had those FBI listening devices you see on TV with the cone and the antenna. I'd even take being a fly buzzing around their table, swatted away every few minutes, just to hear what they were dissecting so intently and animatedly at this hour. I also couldn't help but wonder why they weren't trading their coffee mugs for some shot glasses after I noticed their matching black t-shirts, with "Boy's Trip" written in a comically and ironically large font, only a group of Gen-Zs could pull off.

Before long, I heard the boarding call, and all I had for my big speech on the Notes app of my battered phone screen was "Wow, Olive, you're actually married!" Truly, the stuff to put Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, and co. to shame. I looked down at my basically empty duffel, barely holding on at the seams, and realised that I'd need to buy a suit as soon as I landed because the few shorts and t-shirts I'd packed when half-asleep definitely wouldn't cut it for the brother of the groom. Correction, I'd have to rent a suit. I was, after all, a part-time "Retail Associate" who only made enough to pay rent, stock up on a few groceries, and support my drinking habit. The one-way ticket home had damn near wiped out my savings. A wry smile creeped it's way onto my face - I don't have much, but at least I can always say I'm self-aware.

With one last look around, and a quick swig of the remnants of my glass, I trudged to what felt like my last chance. I'm not much of an optimist, though, so it felt like the beginning of an end I had been preparing my whole adult life for.