Sometimes Life Makes Vodka Seem More Like God

Her lips softly caressed the opening of the vodka bottle. Her sorrows drifted away as she drank and drank the night away. Ninth grade was no party but she liked to pretend.1

Music buzzed in her head although there was none playing. The people buzzing around her disturbed her not. Her brain blocked them out just like her vodka did away with her troubles.2

"Hey, chica. Are you alright? You look a bit...uuhhh...buzzed," a faux concerned voice stated behind her. Without evening looking at the speaker, she simply gave a thumbs up. The speaker walked away from her. Just like everyone else in this world seems to do, she thought. She tipped the bottle back to realize there was none left.3

"Das ist nicht gut," she whispered to herself, scorning herself for drinking so much. She dropped the bottle and it lightly thumped to the ground.4

Her life, as she knew it, was a living hell. There was no point to it but getting drunk and forgetting who the hell she was. Her father never paid any attention to her, especially after the death of her mother. Her father never had much of anything to say. She was just " lil' ol' fucked up Tristan, the slut who couldn't do a damn thing right". She smiled as she thought about how well she lived up to her titles. A cigarette was wenched into her clenched fist. She lit it but forgot entirely to take a drag, seemingly drowning in her own raunchy depression. Others have it a lot worse, she though, and puffed on her cigarette.5

Tristan was a normal fifteen-year-old, going through her belated "I hate myself" phase. She wasn't "gothic" nor did she partake in self-mutilation but her life was not as picture-perfect as she would like to think. Her mother died a year ago. Suicide. Tristans father, ever since, has indulged his sadness in drunkeness and raping her whenever he missed the sexuality of her mother. Tristan thought of their sexual (although one-sided) escapades more as her duty as a daughter to "take care" of her father. She despised not being a virgin, like all of her "friends". She spent at least a week every month wondering if she was pregnant. No one in the world knew of what her and her father did together. Not until this year. Not until him.6

Parties were becoming dull. There was nothing she had not done and nothing she wanted to do over again besides drink and get lost in self-pity. Her "friends" knew there was something wrong with her but they did not care. Besides, she always supplied them with enough drugs and alcohol to get high for weeks with. They went around pretending she was great. She went around prentending not to know they really did not like her.7

Sometime, mid-year, Tristan found herself at a senior-only party, but since many of her "friends" were seniors, she was invited. Tristan also found that, although the invitations said "strictly seniors" many of the partiers were juniors and sophomores. She was almost positive she was the only freshman.8

She sunk into a recliner and pulled out a fifth of vodka she had been saving for this night and by the time the party was half over, she was half blasted. Eventually, she felt sick and wanted to lie down. Tristan found herself laying on a bed in one of the hosts' bedrooms. The covers held her figure and kept her warm as her eyelids fluttered up and down. Projections of her happy and carefree plastered themselves all over the back of her eyelids.9

"Are you alright?" Boy, how many times had she heard that one? She murmured something that sounded like a "yes" as much as possible but she never felt the person concerned leave.10

"Ich bin gut. Geh," she managed. The guy was unconvinced.11

"Do you need anything?" he asked. She laughed inside. Does this guy ever stop, she wondered?12

"I'm fine," she mumbled. The man grabbed her hands and pulled her to a sitting up position.13

"You look that way," he said sarcastically, "First time drinker, eh?" She laughed and shoved her empty vodka bottle towards him. "Damn! No wonder you don't feel well. I'll go get you a warm cloth for your head." The man left and came back within what seemed to Tristan like seconds. A warm sensation, given by a fancy, white, flowered dish cloth, surrouned her head. She passed out. Dreams of her father hitting her across the face and having sex in her bed danced through her mind. She didn't care about waking up the next morning. She didn't want any help from her caretaker. And she despised sex with her father, abuse, drinking, and school. But it was all there, like a nasty zit you keep popping but won't seem to take it's leave. She cried in her sleep about things in her life she could not control, leaving her helpless in a world full of needy people.14