Darling, We'll be Kings for a day (PTV)

16- Tony

I can't believe I was stupid enough to even pick up a bottle. I just wasn't thinking.

I was out having a good time while she was admitted into hospital.

My little girl.

My little Puffel.

What if it had been like last time I relapsed? I couldn't stop and it ended with dad's guitar destroyed- the only thing of him I had at all. What if I hadn't been able to read that text? She would have been all alone.

I arrived at the hospital twenty minutes after I got the text from the doctor guy, and even then our 'mother' was nowhere to be found. The doctor guy said he couldn't get hold of her. Yeah, it was 9 at night. She would predictably be 3 and a half streets away in 'The Hallow Pub'.

A couple years back, Sophie and I were on our own at home on a Friday night. We were talking about some random topics, when suddenly, something must have triggered her. She starts screaming and shouting at me and I didn't have a clue what to do. I was so scared. She was breathing funny and not listening to me; she was only four. Four - and having a full blown panic attack. I was only fourteen and just so scared she was going mad or they would take her away from me or she'd leave me here by myself. What if she becomes just another monster in my mind? What if she haunts me until I hate her face and I'm the one screaming?

Well anyway, I ran with her in my arms, the 3 and a half streets only to be met with a horrified mother. Horrified that we were inconveniencing her 'down time'. Sophie was still screaming. What kind of mother is so drunk by half 8 that she can't give her own daughter HAVING A PANIC ATTACK a second look.

The old men at the back were giving her more attention than our mother.

I still shudder, now, at the memory.

That was the first week I went to a gym. To protect her.

That was the first time I didn't pretend everything was okay with my mother. Because she didn't protect her.

I can rant as long as I want but it's not going to change her. And I am by no mean perfect either... Because that was the first time I drank as well.

I didn't mean to get drunk. I just wanted to see why in hell my mother would do this to herself repeatedly and if it would help get the image of Sophie screaming out of my mind.

It did.

It wasn't like I did it in front of her.

I went to a local, secluded park with a bottle of Jack- plastered before midnight.

It didn't become a pattern until a year later when Sophie turned 5. I took a bottle down the park a couple times after the first, but never on the scale I did after she told me she was being bullied.

The helpless feeling was unshakable. 15 and I couldn't even stand up for my own sister.

Then there was the self loathing. The one thing I didn't want to do in life, was turn into her. But that's exactly what I did. Hence more drinking. Which in turn lead to more self hatred. I was trapped in that circle, even when sober. I hated thinking. I hated my mother. I hated myself.

Thing was, all it took, for me to quit drinking all together, was a little 5 year old nearly in tears. It stung so bad I smashed the bottle rather than drank it.

Worst year of my life.

I hadn't touched alcohol for two years until last night. I wasn't even thinking about it. Now, I don't even remember what we were celebrating.

My little Puffel.

I let her down.

The doctor guy said she had been found, passed out, at school in the lunch break. Then she was taken straight to the hospital and I'm going to be able to see her in 20 minuets. I hope this passes quickly.