Bottles. My house was full of bottles. Bottles littered the floors and most surfaces. I usually had to brush bottles off the couch just to sit down. They were all my mother's bottles, every single one of them.
I sometimes imagined that those bottles could talk. They would tell their stories of why my mother had drunk them. Of what happened after she drunk them. Of how many of them she had drunk.
Those bottles had been controlling both my mother's and my own life for at least three years, or maybe four. But then again, maybe it was only two. I don't even know anymore.
It had all started when my father left. I remember that night vaguely. There had been yelling and anger and a few blows. I feel asleep crying. The next morning when I woke up, dad was gone. My mother was lying on the couch, a bottle in her hand. That had been the first bottle.
After that, our lives revolved around the bottles. For mom, it was all about buying those bottles, and drinking them. For me it had become about hiding those bottles, and avoiding mom when she found them. I was only eleven and already my life had become a living death.
Life had not always been like this. Or at least it wasn't always to me. Mom always tried to hide dad from me. She would take me to the park for the day, and the two of us would have a fun day. At least until we got home. Then dad would yell and mom would send me up to my room. I would sit up there, crying. I had thought that when dad left that everything would get better. I was wrong. Mom just wasn't strong enough to go on alone. I wanted to hate her for that, but I couldn't. I couldn't hate her, she couldn't move on.
