Le premier verre....

This story will seem vague, I warn you. Not out of fear of recognition from any reader, but out of the fact that everyone has had one of those nights. Yes, it's a drinking story. What makes this important to me is not what happened exactly but why it happened.

Lets start with the first time. I was 13, and like any 13 year old I was not enjoying it. I was a weird child with limited "friends". The night was interesting to say the least and a little on the odd side for a normal 13 year old girl. Regardless myself and a "girlfriend" made the decision that to make the nights conversations move more smoothly we would drink out of my parent's liquor cabinet.

This was the first time either of us had done this. I remember loving everything I tasted and I felt stronger with each drink. I became confident and arrogant. I couldn't care less what was going on.

She stopped drinking after a half a bottle of Kahlua. I didn't.

I found a love that night for Gin and especially Vodka. The pain of drinking it only brought me more pleasure. The warmth that it gave me was such a comfort I had never felt before. The sexually urges I had became more intense with each drink. Everything inside of me felt alive. I felt normal. As the night grew on and my belligerence got worse I became aggressive, especially towards the person I was with.

Inevitably my mother caught us in the most inconvenient of times...

Inevitably this story will follow me for life. Of course.

For the next two years I took diet peach snapples, that my stepfather enjoyed so much, and I would pour half out and fill the rest with Gin, Vermouth, and Vodka. I would sit in my room each night by the side of my bed and drink these, I usually didn't have enough to last me longer than a week per bottle, but as long as I had this I felt better. Fear of getting caught brought on it's on dilemma.

Then a new friend introduced me to smoking.

So I put the two together....ah...love.

Now at only 13 I had my first two copping mechanism.

The most interesting thing that out of all my cravings. The one to create was always the strongest. I wanted so badly to paint, to write, to photograph...but never felt I had the resources. I had not paints, nothing to photograph and my writing was so poor it was just an embarrassment for even only myself to read. So I became obsessed with music. I would create playlists and burn mixed cd's. I would cut pictures out of magazines and use nail polish to create collages for album art. When I finished I felt whole and accomplished. Even though I was using other artists work, I manipulated it into my own.

I gave these to only one person, a girl I fell in love with at age 14. The first person other than my family that I said "I love you" to. I got the opportunity after I moved to see her again in New York.

She still had the cd's.