I remember when it first started.
You kept the Wild Turkey under the sink, and I'm sure you knew I'd see it. You left all the time. "It's Date Night, we'll be back soon." you'd say, the case of beer already slurring the quiet words you spit at me.
And so I nodded, and turned away, and you walked out the door with your trophy girl connected to your waist. and I like to tell myself she was a much better woman than Mom will ever be.
It would usually be about 12 then, who knows where a couple needs to go at midnight. but I did not care. as long as you were gone.
I would slide the glass door open and step onto the porch, letting the air chill me to the bone. I savored the shaking and chills that the twenty degree air gave me. It was much better than the shivers I got hearing you take hundreds of pulls from hundreds of bottles.
When I walk back inside, your absence reminds me of when you would first disappear. I remember how it started then, too. First the bars, but you got bored of that real fast. So you locked yourself in the basement with a new bottle every night. Then the hospital bed.
But now, in the new apartment, you were perfectly fine with pretending none of that ever happened. but I knew that Jack and I, your only children, were just disgusting reminders of the life you tried to build with an insane woman.
And so I'd reach for the Wild Turkey, chasing away the thought of you, the sickness, the percosets, the new girlfriend, and the new feeling I'd just discovered. The worthless feeling that once I walked into the room, I was not wanted. I was now a burden.
And I've stayed a burden ever since then.
Wild Turkey and cheap white wine ran through my veins for the first time that winter. since then, we are best friends. I remember the first nights I would lose myself, invite my real "friends" over too, just in case.
They laughed, but I was drowning.
That's all I can use to describe it now. The Drowning. it is simply that. an inescapable emptiness and weight that pulls you into what you might call Hell.
But at first, I was completely happy with it. you, her, him...none of you were on my mind. only the flow of sweet music or the begging calls of lovely sleep.
And then, things changed.
The drinking became a need and not a release. I would do anything to feel the fuzz and the effect it gave me. I would drink most of the bottle and desperately fill it with water, hoping you wouldn't notice. (Did you? you never said a word.)
Wild Turkey, Cheap Red Wine, ****** White Wine, and bottles with labels I don't dare to read are my only friends now.
In two years time, the once lovely drag the ethanol gave me turns into nights filled with heavy rain, chain smoking, and puking all over my friends floor without recollecting a single moment.
Waking up in other people's clothes and feeling my body stay drained becomes a strange reality, and I wonder how things may have been different if I never touched the heavy bottles in the first place.
I am sixteen, and I feel as if I've lived a thousand years. and maybe the scariest thing is knowing that eventually I will have access to any bottle on the shelves.
And I don't know if I'll be able to resist grabbing every single one.