Dare Me to Live

Chapter 23 (Part one)

I was ripped awake by a large amount of extremely cold water hitting me in the face.

"What the fuck?" I spluttered, jerking upright. Throwing back the soaked covers and sliding to the floor I l looked down at my sodden t-shirt and shorts. The clock said three in the morning,

Amber stood in front of me holding a now-empty vase, still in her party clothes though she had kicked off her shoes.

"What the hell?" I shouted again, shivering as a breeze from the open winder hit my wet skin. Goosebumps erupted on my arms and legs.

"You need to get your shit together," she said. Smudged make-up around her eyes made her look even angrier.

"What is your problem?" I snapped. The rage had momentarily distracted me from the churning in my stomach and pounding headache, but now they hit me full force. I put a hand on my bed to steady myself.

Outside, someone was singing the National Anthem loudly and off-key.

"I don't know what the hell happed with you and Tyler, but drinking yourself to death is not the answer," she yelled, stabbing a finger at the empty wine bottle on the floor and the half-full one on the bedside table. "And I'm sure as hell not driving you to the hospital in the middle of the night. So figure it out!"

"You don't get to tell me how and when to solve my problems," I said, stomping over to grab my towel from the back of the door.

"I do when I come back to find you passed out drunk. I get it's a Friday night, but you do this during the week too," retorted Amber. "So find a different coping method before I call someone."

Too infuriated to respond, I yanked the covers off the bed, grabbed my shower caddy and stormed down the hall. I threw the comforter into the dryer before going to the bathroom and picking the least gross shower on the end, trying not to think about the fact I was standing in a communal bathroom in bare feet. With the shower on as hot as I could stand, I stood under the jet for a long time, trying to get my intoxicated brain to process what had happened.

A prickling sense of guilt and shame crept its way up my spine and around my throat until tears burned in my eyes. As much as I would have preferred the wake-up to be in the form of something other than ice water, Amber was right. The answer to my problems wasn't at the bottom of a bottle. And the fact that I needed Amber to tell me that meant something had to change.

Kevin's voice from the beginning of the year floated around my head.

"Alcohol is the thing that makes time worse not better."

Vanessa's voice followed. "We don't need to add alcoholic to your current list of ailments."

I needed to let go and I knew that. But after all this time, I still didn't know how. I thought I had begun to with Tyler, but the hole I was continuing to dig just proved that I had only latched onto someone else, someone who also happened to be sinking.

I stood in the shower for a long time watching the steam coalesce around me, but my brain produced nothing nearly as substantial. It was as though it was shying away from the task because deep down I knew I didn't want to separate myself, cut ties, and never look back. With either of them.

But I couldn't do this forever either. I wouldn't make it.

****

Any type of solution continued to evade me, and the more I tried to find an answer only to hit another wall, the more anxious I got. The nightmares were at their highest volume yet and the dark circles under my eyes got darker as the days got longer and the number of hours I slept grew shorter.