Unsteady - Memoir

Chapter One

     My eyes are heavy and my vision is blurred. Pressed against the wall and sitting on the ground, I stare directly in front of me. I'm cold but I don't want to get up. My room is always cold.

     Holding a vanilla vodka bottle in my hand, I continuously think about my future. "I'm going to be a nobody," I endlessly say to myself, "I'm never going to be important". Then I take a swing of vodka.

     A girl of my size who has such a low tolerance to alcohol can get drunk fast. Luckily, when I get drunk, I don't do anything stupid like go downstairs and tell my family that I'm drunk, and I don't text my ex-boyfriend, crying about how much I miss him. Instead, I pass out. I sleep out my hangover 'til the next morning.

     Since it's finally summer, I can get easily get drunk more. I drink my brother's vodka that he rarely drinks, and he hasn't found out that I drink it yet. I don't even think he knows that it's missing. I've done this whole "drink until you sleep" schedule for about six months. I make sure I ration out the sips so I can do this for a little while longer before I run out of alcohol.

So far, I have about two sips left. I'll save those two for next time I'm feeling worthless.

     Twisting the cap on the bottle, I already feel the drunk side-effects. I slowly get up and hide the bottle in my closet's attic, and stumble to the bed. Shivering, I pull the blanket over me and a rush of goosebumps from the warmth overwhelm my body. Before falling asleep, I shed a single tear.

~     

     It wasn't always like this. I mean, it wasn't always the same routine of getting drunk and sleeping. In fact, life was pretty good. My dad had fought his leukemia and he was in remission, my mother had a stable job for a few months, my oldest brother Thomas was succeeding in college while my other old brother Colin was working hard in high school. As for me, I was enjoying middle school; 7th grade to be exact.

     Suddenly, on a cold night in December, just 9 days after his birthday, my dad fell ill. It was the night of my cheerleading competition. Whenever he reached a fever over 101.9 degrees, the doctors demanded, he had to go to the hospital. Of course, on my last cheerleading competition of the season (and little did I know it was my last one ever), he had to have a 102.1 fever.

     Being stubborn, childish self, I wanted to stay at the competition and see how my team did. I rolled my eyes when my mom was warning me that dad was sick. "Can't he just wait another hour or something?" I complained before storming off.

     Well, it was a waste to even wait anyways. My team received the last place trophy, when I was positive that we'd get second, if not first place.

     After the award ceremony, we rushed my dad to the hospital that he's been to ever since he was diagnosed with leukemia: Cooper Hospital of Camden New Jersey. It was about a 30 to 45-minute drive from where we lived, so it wasn't so hard to visit him when he had to stay overnight. Anyways, we signed him in and the doctors told him to stay overnight. My mother and I kissed and hugged him goodbye, not knowing that it was the last time we'd see him awake.

     On the 10th, my dad called my mom to tell her what room he was in so she could visit the next day. "Everything seemed fine," my mom said a few weeks after the incident, "I don't know what happened."

     Finally, on the 11th of December, we received a call from Cooper Hospital at around 2 o'clock in the morning. I was sleeping in my mother's bed with her like I did every other night when my dad was in the hospital. I didn't want her to feel lonely nor did I want to be alone.

     The phone was ringing and my mom got up. I was half awake so I could hear whatever she was saying when she answered it. To this day, I'm sure she still doesn't know that I was awake during that call.