I reach for my fifth drink of the night each sip pushing down the bitter words that my mother said. I look around wondering why I feel so lonely in a room full of people. Maybe I need to drink faster and then I will start to have a good time. If someone told me that at age twenty I would try to drink my life away I wouldn't have believed them. When I was sixteen cutting was my method to rid myself of the pain, but alcohol is so much better. Not only does it get rid of the pain but it helps me to forget things that no one should have to remember, it even helps me sleep at night. Even after all these years the echo of my childhood pleas and tears still play in the night, it's as if the walls have heard my teenage cries and held the memories of my childhood inside of them, sometimes I fear that others will hear the walls wispering, that only makes me drink more because I know they won't like what they hear. I drink faster now remembering these things and that even though he lives in a different state and I am no longer a little girl I can still hear the door crreaking slowly open, I hear his footsteps and I count his breaths. I close my eyes and let the whisky burn my throat i see my childhood bedroom and I see myself counting his breathes. The fifth breathe means he's next to my bed and the eighth means he's lying beside me, but his hands never come not even in my memories not anymore, because now I'm staring down into an empty bottle and I know that this will be a night to forget.