Beaten, Betrayed, Violated.

Rot-Gut Vodka

Most people my age were spending Friday nights skating, with their friends. Me? I spent the day cleaning, cooking, trying to bribe my parents into letting me do one thing that was entertaining. My dad was easy. Just clean the house, and get angi to stop bitching. Her, not so much. To bribe her, everything in the house had to be so clean, that if she took a white glove (and she did), and wiped it across every surface, there wouldn't be a molecule of dust. Including the floor that five children ran amok on. You have no fucking clue how hard it was to keep the house clean long enough to even show her.
I had one friend I was allowed to invite over for a sleepover, once every few weeks, although if I was extremely "good" (that means doing nothing but staring at the wall, cooking, and cleaning) I could have her over more frequently.
After sweeping, mopping, dusting, picking up toys, scrubbing every surface, cooking, doing dishes and making sure my room was spotless, I would let her walk around checking my work. If even one thing was out of place, or she found dust or dirt, she would tear everything apart, forcing me to take hours to clean everything once more.
She was fucking psychotic.
That said, her being a horrible parent is what kept me from killing myself sooner.
Every time Ayla (my best and only friend at the time) came over, we would slip her 20$, and she would buy us a huge bottle of Vodka. The worst kind. The kind you could easily mistake for tubing alcohol. She would keep the rest for beer. She was fast becoming an alcoholic. She was already a pill junkie. Not a good combo. She started drinking with us. And for a while, when she was fucked up, I thought she loved me. She was actually nice to me. She complemented me. She acted like she cared. She even started hiding my drinking nights from my father, as long as I shared.
As long as she wasn't sober, she was my friend, and I truly believed that she loved me. I didn't know that drugs affected you that way. I smoked weed for Christs sake. There's no mind altering about it. You're still you. So I thought that she was too.
That notion quickly came to an end once I started seeing her while sober again. On some level, I knew and avoided her.
While the night before, she might praise my poetry, tell me that I was special, the next day, she would take it back with vengeance. She would never leave me with doubt that she hates me. She never remembered those nights we spent talking and getting along, but I always will. I wish that's who she was sober, but the fact is, she's a cruel, lying, bitch. Still, I used those nights as a crutch. It was all I had.
A pill junkie, my quiet best friend who knew nothing about my misery, and a bottle of the cheapest Vodka the liquor store sold.
I still cringe at the memory of the taste.