The Bottle

My childhood was spent in competition with the bottles my mom loved so much more than me; I insulted seltzers, tried to blow chipped wine glasses up with my mind, and death glared bottles of tequila. Yet none of these alcohols ever made my blood boil as much as the handle of vodka my mom kept above the fridge.

If she wasn’t at the bar, she’d wind down with a drink every night before bed. Whether that be a gin & tonic or a glass of whiskey—her leisure sips would eventually lead to gulps and glazed eyes before she’d stumble to bed. This became routine. I learned to ignore her past 8 PM. But when that handle came down from its thrown, the only thing I knew to expect was that my mom would no longer be a mother.

The liquid would steal her; she didn’t want to sleep, she didn’t want to parent—she wanted to leave. The vodka would entrance her and she’d follow its siren song to the nearest bad idea: a bar, her ex boyfriends house, even her ex husbands lawn. And when she’d arrive home, broken, battered, and sad—I’d blame the bottle.

I’d see the liquid slosh in her cup, or smell the alcohol on her breath and I’d be angry. I’d be angry at the manufacturers, at the distillers, at the marketers for creating a substance that stole my mom every night, but I’d never be mad at her. I faulted the alcohol for each of her misgivings.

My hatred for the substance made trips to the supermarket horrifying, high school parties nightmares, and adulthood pathetic; I quickly learned that sobriety is only celebrated by rehab workers, alcoholics themselves, and soda companies. So I refused invites to clubs and to getting drinks after work; If I were to enter a bar—my eyes would scan the walls until I’d make eye contact with my worst enemy sitting across the room. I would be a 4th grader again, taunted by the too tall appliance protecting my abuser.

However, under all the resentment, sometimes I question if we could have been friends. If every one of our fights didn’t have to end the same, or maybe if my mom was once sitting on my bar stool: staring down her oldest friend sitting on the 3rd shelf mere feet away just as I was looking up at my arch nemesis. Did she know I was two blocks away, calling the neighbors to see if they could take me to school in the morning? Or that my dad was doing everything in his power to take legal custody? Probably not. Her time was too well spent in liquor stores forgetting she had a kid to begin with.

As much as I could pretend it didn’t eat me alive—I wanted to know. I wanted to know what my mother loved so much more than me for so many years.

So, I walked two blocks down the road to the same liquor store my mom had made a hundred purchases at—bought the same 80 proof bottle she kept above the Whirlpool—and I still didn’t understand. The burn made me feel lighter, yet the warmth did nothing to comfort the gaping wound in my heart where a mother’s love should be.

Even with the alcohol in my veins and my liver working overtime—it didn’t distract me from the years of ignorance, from the missed games, or from the late nights worrying; It just made me mad. If I couldn’t forget my mother’s negligence, how could she have forgotten she had a child? If the bottle of Tito’s didn’t wash away the years of neglect, how could it have for her.

With all these thoughts circling my brain and my head between my knees— tears splattering the tile floor below me—I stopped blaming the bottle. No amount of Smirnoff, Grey Goose, or Crown could have made me do the things she did to me as a child. I imagined my daughter—just a wall between us—looking above the fridge to find the same bottle that ruined my childhood.

So, as the remainder of the handle was dumped down my kitchen sink, I started blaming my mother.

I started blaming her for everytime she’d wake me with her loud steps while on her way to bed, for everytime I had to ‘fend for myself’ for dinner, and for everytime she cared about alcohol more than her own blood.

Oddly enough, as the liquor slumped down my drain, I started to feel bad. I resented alcohol for so long because of my mothers carelessness; I blamed every bad part of my childhood on the beverage to the point I could barely stand to look at it. But now, standing in my kitchen as a 30 year old, I could confidently say it was never the liquor that I hated. It was my mom.

No vodka will ever be left above my fridge, but invites to parties will be accepted. My daughter won’t have to experience being enemies with glass bottles or crushed cans as I once was; they’ll be stowed away in cabinets far out of reach and sight. I’ll wait for the day she may take it from its shelf and drag it to a party. Maybe I won’t even notice, or maybe I’ll pretend not to just so I can know she’s not scared of alcohol the way I was for so long.

But until then, I’ll wind down with a glass. I will have a beer at my friends wedding, I will drink a flute of Champaign on New Years, I may even sit on my bar stool and apologize to the bottles across from me. And when I get home, I’ll sneak into my daughter’s room, kiss her on the forehead, and tiptoe back to my bed. I’ll do this all so—when my head hits that pillow—I can rest easy knowing my mother always lost to the bottle, and I will always win.