Alcohol has seemed to haunt me my entire life, whether it be the way my parents marriage disappeared before I was even born because of my father’s addiction, and resulting jail time.

Or whether it is the current situation of my aunt and her pending addiction, the way her life swings in the balance every day, either a momentary day of sobriety or another day of alcoholism, alcohol is the silent, deadly force that follows me wherever I go.

It was my decision, to never ever let myself slip into the hold of the addiction, never give myself a chance to let the addiction work itself into one more person’s life.
Never, ever would I let myself screw up, an unending vigil, my life throughout college, high school, the most tempting times, I would never let myself slip, once.
Yet I guess that’s not the way it happened.
Alcohol was always there, always waiting in the wings, ready to grab me and never let go. I saw many classmates fall into the despair that was alcohol, yet their incidental pain was short, I knew mine would be forever.
“Never let yourself get started Maddie, you’ll know it’s different for you,” is what father told me. Yet being sober for eight years was enough to teach me that he knew what he was talking about, I had dedicated myself to the cause, always advising my friends to never drink, or do anything else as well. I made my close friends take a pact to not drink, and they did it because of the sheer importance to me.
I drilled into my mind that I would never do it, ever. I was never presented ample opportunity to it as well, I wasn’t a hard partier and anyone that was my friend would see no use for it either. Yet I never expected the ways alcohol would touch my life.
There were the obvious ones, getting drunk or high or hungover never had much appeal, why “have fun” if you could never remember what you did when you woke up? What was the fun of being embarrassed by your own stupidity? I had seen my mother drunk, not fun, not comfortable, why put yourself and others through that?
There were always rumors of who and what house had the best parties, yet they were as true as all the other ones. Besides, why would you give yourself to do stupid things while under the influence?
Suspensions from school for being drunk couldn’t happen if you were never drunk, bar fights wouldn’t happen without the alcohol, there would be no drunken rages, abuse rates would fall, life would just be so much simpler.
And after watching several people hurt themselves and loved ones over it just seemed stupid, yet wouldn’t make sense what happened to me? The good always die young, don’t they?
I never thought that I would be the one to go like this, but no ever does. Who would have thought that while going to a party with my best friend we would have been hit by a drunk driver, paralyzing my friend and killing me in the process? Life has to have some irony, I suppose.