After my seventh year ended, I went into a bit of a shock. I stayed home all day. My showers, eating habits, and sleeping patterns were all irregular. I ate unhealthily and gained quite a few pounds, living the easy life now that I no longer had to go to school. It was almost enlightening to have so much free time to myself—Holly was at school for her last year, and I never heard much out of her when she was home for breaks. In fact, the whole house was silent most of the time. Drew and I had moved out into our own place, which was small, but manageable with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Drew sure was proud of himself for putting up the rent every month on time, bringing home groceries, and making sure the house was clean and well-decorated; especially since he wasn’t exactly making a ton of cash. Holly would always comment on how nice the place would smell when she arrived, which, as time progressed, became less frequent.
I would occupy my time with crossword and Sudoku puzzles, with numbers and letters flowing endlessly through my mind at any given moment. My room had piles of books all around, with a small pathway leading from the door to the bed and from the bed to the closet. If I ever left the apartment it was to shop for groceries if Drew worked overtime or to go to the park and get some fresh air. Sometimes I took to buying Muggle newspapers on the corner of a street by a liquor store and a dry-cleaners’, as they always had crosswords; and sometimes I would enter the liquor store and buy odds and ends, as it always included alcohol.
My room eventually became a storehouse for not only crossword books and Sudoku puzzles, but also for Muggle newspapers, the Daily Prophet (of which I had re-subscribed to by sneaking money from Drew’s stash), and empty spirit bottles. The kind varied from week to week, and at one point I even took up smoking. I distinctly remember dragging myself out of bed one late afternoon, throwing on some shoes and a robe, pulling my hair back, and slouching all the way to the liquor store, creeping in with red, sand-encrusted eyes and a killer headache from an alcoholic binge the previous night; I remember slowly stumbling over, grabbing my favorite spirit; I remember creeping over to the counter and waiting in line for a moment; I remember demanding cigarettes in a gravelly, dry voice; I remember the young boy looking at me in fear as he indulged me in my guiltiest pleasures, ringing me up and sending me on my way with a “Have a wonderful day, Missus, and God be with you.”
But most of all, I remember stopping right before the automatic door; I remember it sliding open before me, letting in brilliant rays of sunlight not only to the store, but to my consciousness; I remember realizing, at that very moment, what a helpless and despicable creature I had become. I remember looking down at my hands—my dirty, unkempt hands with fingernails too long—and beginning to weep. I remember dropping my spirit and my cigarettes and running from the liquor store (as fast as a sleep-deprived woman with a hangover possibly could) and eventually making it back to the apartment, fumbling for my keys and realizing I had none, reaching under the welcome mat and finding the spare, jamming the spare in the lock as hard as I could, unlocking the door, storming into the apartment, slamming the door behind me, racing to the shower, throwing off my clothes as fast as I could, throwing the shower handle up and as far to the left as I could, and taking a baptismal bath in the scalding heat of my errs.
When I finally retreated from the shower, I could feel welts sprouting up along my body, but in a sense, they felt good—the pain was relieving, and the steam clogging up my cluttered bathroom was a relief. I stood there, naked, for a moment—I ran my hand over the mirror to clear the steam and look at myself, my face as red as my hair, my blue eyes dull and lifeless. My teeth looked horrid—I hadn’t any idea when I last brushed them.
That was the next step. I ran some water and began furiously scrubbing my teeth—my gums bled and tickled and hurt and bled some more, but I paid it no mind. All of the pain was retribution for my actions—for alienating my friends, my siblings, and my parents; for forcing Drew to support the two of us by being too lazy to get a job; for spending all of the “allowance” he had given me to “help me get on my feet” on alcohol and rubbish despite telling him that I was saving up to get a place of my own; for having taken advantage of everything and everyone, and for being a bipolar ass to everyone I had met in the past nineteen years.
It was time to turn things around.
Subject: LIBBY BROWN 
Sat Feb 04, 2012 11:17 pm
