*Note, this is not my pic. Yahoo search results: vodka in a glass
8 Years Old
It is the middle of the night and I am bored. I woke up from a dream and couldn’t go back to sleep. In my gut I feel empty. I am not particularly lonely. Just something deep inside of me feels so vacant. I toss the sheets and blanket off and quietly get out of bed. Tiptoeing out of the room, I sneak into the kitchen thinking I’ll find something to eat. But I’m not hungry. I just feel bored. I look in the cabinets where we keep the pots and pans, remembering I saw something behind them the other day. I wanted to check it out, see what was hiding behind our collection of cooking and baking paraphernalia. I try so hard to be quiet. The air conditioner clicks off. It is silent in the house and I know that one small sound will alert my mom. My small arm reaches way behind the cabinet and extracts a bottle of clear liquid. “Vodka,” it says. Hmm, I think to myself. What do we have here? I open the bottle and take a whiff. Whew, it’s strong. I almost cough. I take a small drink, straight from the bottle. In my mouth it stung and as it ran down my throat it nearly burned. It went straight down to my empty stomach and started to gurgle. I might have shivered at the feeling of the drink. I took another drink, this time a longer drink and more deliberate. The sting in my mouth wasn’t as strong and it didn’t really burn my throat as much either. And when it hit my stomach this time, I started to feel warm and tingly all over.
Oh, my god. This is IT, I thought to myself. Whatever this it is, it feels great. My head started to fog a bit and I finally felt relaxed. I no longer felt empty. Later in life, I realize that this is what one can call a spiritual experience. I filled that void that has seemed for so long just there.
I take one more drink, for good measure. I fought inside my head whether I wanted to smuggle the bottle into my room and hide it, or if I wanted to put it back into the cabinet. Would someone realize that some of it is gone? Realizing it was a clear liquid, I decided to turn on the sink and water it down, just a little. I think I put it back in the same place. As quietly as I could I walked, or maybe stumbled a little, back to my room. As I crawled back into bed, my sister stirred in her sleep. Did she know I was gone for a few minutes? I watched her for a moment. She mumbled something in her sleep but that was it. I laid my head on my pillow. It seemed cool underneath me. It felt good against my warm and flushed face. I snuggled up to my sheets and my stuffed baby Snoopy and slept hard.
I am only eight years old.
Marcy with a "Y" 