He goes through phases, the way everyone does. On a good day he's smiling from the moment he wakes up. He can remember everything and he makes everyone else smile. He hits the road in the afternoon and winds up in the pub at night, and then he's chatting up and finding everything about a self-professed regular at the Lonely Hearts Club. The rest of it's a blur of stumbling home, trying to undo buttons in the dark and getting high on the usual rushes from sex until the next morning when cum and nicotine lingers on the surface of his tongue.
On a bad day he's broken a few things around the house, along with one or three of his own bones. He does everything he can not to put a fist in his son's face and gets shitfaced by around 2 in the afternoon. The rest of it's darker than dark; sex, blood, a man's tie and a woman's tears, and the only thing everyone wants to do is muster up the courage to tell him to get help.
And if the day after the bad day's a good day, he'll go out and get a bottle of pills that he doesn't need, pills that he'll never touch again. If the bad day's followed by another bad day, the world starts getting the silent treatment while he starts ripping himself apart.
The number of bottles of pills there is testament to how many good days he's had following not-so-good days. He doesn't have anything to show for the others.
"I'm not sick," he said, rolling over in bed, pulling the dirtied sheets with him. He wasn't keen in this particular topic - it's one he's had a thousand times over with the parents, the kids, the people that pretend they care about him, and it's one that wouldn't lead them anywhere nice.