floating | ✓

01| drunk

“When people hurt you over and over think of them like sandpaper. They may scratch and hurt you a bit, but in the end, you end up polished and they end up useless. ”

-Chris Colfer

01| drunk

I’ve been betrayed before. It’s not a nice feeling. The burning feeling in my throat is not great either. What I’m doing now is to stop myself from feeling all along.

I know how it goes. I get drunk, and then I can’t keep it in my stomach, so I throw up. I sober up enough to land myself in my bed. I wake up in the morning with a terrible hangover and sleep all through Sunday. It’s been like this ever since I started drinking.

It may sound like I drink every other day, but I don’t. I only drink to suppress whatever I’m feeling. Sometimes, I don’t feel. Those days, I don’t need a drink.

Today, I am feeling. I’m feeling a lot more than I want to feel. So here I am, drinking and looking for toilets so I can throw up later.

The music blasts through the whole room, extraordinarily loud. The teens around the room are louder. This is the Carlson household. The Carlson brothers are pretty popular in school, the older one being more popular than the younger. The younger one is in the same grade as me. I search around in my brain for his name. 

I can’t seem to remember.

I had no plan to come to this party. I never have plans to go to any parties. I am not a big party lover. But once in a while, I drop in on one or two, just to experience it and to see if I’m missing out on something revolutionary happening among the kids my age. Turns out, revolutionary things do happen. At the last party I went to, a few people were trying to make model airplanes with cards and corkscrews.

Nothing turns out really well during a party. Not in my case at least.

The alcohol burns in my throat as I take another sip. I had an empty stomach when I came here. Mom was calling me for dinner. I said I had already had snacks and was full. She believed it and gave up on forcing me to have dinner with her and my family.

The truth is I felt so overwhelmed with my feelings that I couldn’t think of going downstairs and facing my family with a smiley face. It seemed impossible. So I fled.

There’s a window in my bedroom that opens to the roof. From the roof, I take advantage of the pipes that run straight down to the ground. To make it easier, there’s also a palm tree standing right beside the corner that helps me get down, although it’s hard to get up. It’s always hard to get up.

From my muddled point of view I can see teens mashed up against one another on the couches. Some are playing stupid games to entertain themselves, like Truth or Dare, cards, beer pong, and anything they made up themselves. The whole room is illuminated by blue and purple lights, giving it some sort of weird, magical feel. 

I almost feel guilty fooling mom like that. I have a very nice family. They are honest, happy people. Their world is colorful and simple. You do your job, earn your money and food, eat, sleep, entertain yourself, engage with people, make friends, laugh, live.

Sometimes, I think, What is wrong with me? Why isn’t my world like theirs?

I’ve tried to figure out the reasons. It’s not like I have some horrible disease, and I’m not a damsel in distress. I just don’t know what’s wrong with me, which is exactly what is wrong with me.

Some days, I am completely fine. I’m a normal soon to be seventeen-year-old teenage girl. I have dreams, I have friends, I go school, and I am busy. I have my family. I engage with them. I laugh, make jokes, make the people around me laugh. I feel like everything is possible. I feel like life is beautiful.