My social injustice essay.

Mar 21, 2008 - 10:06 AM PST

I walk up the staircase to my third floor apartment. Taking out my keys, I open my securely locked door. I set the few items I purchased at the store on the kitchen counter when I enter the room. Since my power is still turned off, I light the candle placed on the old table I have had since I moved out of my parent’s house. A subtle glow lightens the room enough to put away my items. After I finish, I open the bottle of cheap wine I had just enough money to buy. Money has been an issue lately since I was fired from my job. It wasn’t my fault I was late again, I had no way to get there. At least I don’t remember finding a way to get there. I sit down on the mattress that is in the middle of the living room. I try to keep all of my activity in the front two rooms since I can’t turn on the heat. I sit my glass on the floor and lie on my back. I feel relaxed. I have been walking all day to find another job but everywhere I went, they wouldn’t hand me an application. I pour another glass of wine.
An hour or so passes and the bottle of wine is now empty. My body and mind seem connected but I am unsure of what I am doing. I feel myself walk out of my apartment and down the stairs. It’s taking longer than usual to walk down the three flights of stairs, or are there four? Almost out of instinct, I walk towards my sister’s house. She lives pretty close to my apartment, I think. I forgot to grab a coat and now the brisk fall air is starting to paint my checks a cherry red. My walk evolves into a jog as the temperature seems to drop in degrees. I know my sister lives around here somewhere. I keep jogging down the crappy city sidewalks hoping to see a familiar building. My mind is racing and I cannot figure out where I am anymore. Where was I headed anyways? I slow back down to walk but soon have to stop all together as I begin to compulsively sob. Once again I have failed. I am unsure of my location and have no way to call for help. I grab the nearby railing and sit down on the set of stairs behind me to keep from falling. People are walking past me. I can feel their glances but they keep walking. Can’t they see I need help? People just keep walking past and it all becomes blurry. The buildings seem to tower over me and I am trapped in the middle. I feel all alone now. I see the people but everything has gone silent. I no longer hear the beeping taxis or the barking dogs. I can only hear my own breaths trying to catch up with the tears that are streaming down my face. I scream out to see if anyone can hear me. To my surprise I cannot even hear my own scream. This cannot be happening, not again. I start to feel dizzy and I watch the world disappear into my eyelids.
I open my eyes only to find myself on my own mattress. My head is pounding. Did I ever even leave my own apartment? I feel the sun pouring into the windows and onto my face, it must be morning again. I hear water running from the kitchen and sit up to see what the noise is. My body starts to shake as I attempt to stand up. I am able to stumble into the kitchen and sit down at the table with a newly burning candle. I don’t remember buying this candle. I see my sister washing a few dishes at the sink. When did she come over? She turns around and slightly jumps backwards startled by me. She then sits down next to me at the table.
“How did you sleep?” She asks me as she slightly turns her head to the side. I tried to respond to her voice but my throat is hurting too bad to produce any sound. She walks over to the stove and pours a glass of hot water into a mug she just cleaned. She gets an apple cinnamon tea bag out of a box and places it into the mug. She spins it around a few times with her finger and puts in down on the table in front of me. “Here, drink this.”
I willing drank the tea, maybe it will make my headache go away. After a few sips, I sat my cup down and looked at her. I stared at her for some answer, some reasoning. Was it all a dream?
“You weren’t dreaming, you know?” She always seems to be able to read my mind.
“Then what happened?” I mutter out the barely audible words.
“I was coming home from work as usual. Once I got about four buildings down, I heard someone scream. I thought nothing of it until I saw someone sitting on the stairs leading up to my building. As I got closer, I noticed it was you. You had passed out cold.” She looks me in the eye searching for some recognition of the events that occurred the night before. Quickly, she realizes I remember nothing. She continues. “I shook you to see if you would wake up. It took a few minutes but you finally woke up enough for me to help you home. You don’t remember any of this, do you?”
I try to remember anything from last night. All I can think of is coming home and drinking a glass of wine. Now to think of it, I think I had a couple glasses of wine. I don’t remember leaving the apartment afterwards though. My sister is looking at me, her glare seems to be worsening the more I try to recall the night’s events but I cannot. “Not at all.” I reply.
She stands up and forcedly pushes her chair under the table. “Damnit, you don’t remember a single thing. You never remember one damn thing. You’re the older one, you should be taking care of me, not the other way around. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t handle it. Not with my family now. What do you have? A run down apartment with no heat or electricity, that’s what you have. That is all you have. You barely have enough money to buy food but you spend what pennies you do have on boos. Do you understand what I am saying to you? You are an alcoholic. Can’t you understand that? What else is it going to take? What if I wasn’t there to help you?”
I am silent. I look down at my folded hands. Alcoholic? I only had a few drinks, nothing more than casual drinking. I am not an alcoholic. I cannot be an alcoholic. That is something that happens to other people, not me. Not me.
I look back up at my sister. She is starting to put her shoes on. Why would she come over to accuse me of such an absurd actions. I start to feel angry. I think this is just another excuse to argue with me. I never even left the apartment last night so there is no possible way that I would have wandered over and passed out at her house.
“It’s impossible!” I find myself standing up. Ignoring the extreme shaking that I start to feel again I walk towards her. “You have always wanted to be better than me. You have always tried to be the better child. Now you come over here and accuse me of being an alcoholic. An alcoholic of all things! Even after everything we went through with dad, you have the nerve to come over here and yell at me for not having money to support myself.” I feel the anger through my entire body. I am shaking from head to toe. How could she?
“I think you need to sit back down…” she tells me as she sits her coat down on my dusty wood floors. She starts to walk towards me with her hand outreached to comfort me. I quickly push it away.
“No! I don’t need to sit back down, you need to leave. Just grab your coat and get out. Walk down those stairs and out of my life. I don’t need you to criticize everything I do. We all can’t lead your perfect life.” I pick her coat up and thrust it at her.
“Fine.” And just like that, she turns around, walks out the door, and slams it behind her.
I quickly walk over back into the kitchen with anger still in my eyes. I open the cupboards until I find a half empty bottle of vodka. I pick up a glass and pour the vodka into it until it is spilling over the edge of the glass. I bring the glass to my lips and throw back my head to have a drink. I bring down the glass and start to walk towards the other end of the room. I feel my knees shaking immensely and suddenly they give out completely. I fall to the floor and the glass breaks on impact. My head collapses in my hands and I feel the tears come pouring out. When have I evolved into such a monster? Tears are mixed with my cries out to God. Has my life really come to this? What have I just done? The floor around me is mixed with vodka and tears. I watch the puddle take surround me. It seems to engulf me inside of it. I am the prisoner of the puddle, trapped behind my own creation of walls. I scream as more tears fall down my face only making my walls thicker. I cannot stop. I cannot escape from my own jail. I have become just like my father. She was right. How could I have been so oblivious to everything so clear.
My mind races back to when I was eight years old. Father had come home late that night. He woke me from my sleep and I walked down stairs to see what Mother was yelling about. He was drunk, again, except this time he was yelling back at my mother. He was screaming words at her that an eight year old should never hear their father say. I hid on the stairs where he couldn’t see me. Mother kept telling him to sit down and to calm down and that we would wake my sister and I. He grabbed a picture off the wall and tried to throw it at her to silence her. He kept yelling and kept telling her to shut up. She was no longer yelling back but yelling for help. He pulled the lamp off of the table and threw it at her. This time he hit her. The glass shattered and her red blood fell onto the floor with it. She was no longer screaming. She was now lying in a puddle of her own blood. Once he had seen what he had done, Father started to sob. I had never seen my father cry before. I ran up the stairs and went into my sister’s room. I remember hearing the door slam as I lied down next to her. We never saw him again and we buried our mother later that week.
My father was an alcoholic. I am his child. Never did I think I would become him, but I had.
I stand back up and attempt to gather my composure. I take a deep breath and step out of the puddle in to the rest of the dusty room. I realize that I don’t have to be my father. I can finally get him out of my life, for good. I walk into the bathroom and look into the mirror. My face is tear-stained and my eyes are blood shot. I remove my few articles of clothing and get into the shower. I just stand under the shower head and luke warm water droplets fall on top of me. I clean myself up, get out of the shower and change into cleaner clothes. I grab my coat and walk out the door leaving my puddle behind me.
I walk down the sidewalk towards my sister’s. This time I have reason. I find her apartment building and press the buzzer.
I hear a crackle and then a familiar voice come out of the speaker “Hello? Who is it?”
“It’s me, we need to talk.”
“Hold on. I will be right there.” A minute later I see her come to the door and open it. It looks like I have just disturbed her from something important. I start to feel like I made the wrong decision to come over but something deep inside me tells me to stay. “What do you want?” she snaps at me.
I clear my throat and start to fidget with my hands. “I want to apologize.” I mutter. “You were right. I, I…” I cannot get the words to come out of my mouth. I have yet to look her in her eyes.
She grabs my chin and holds it up until my eyes meet hers. We stare at each other for a few seconds. I feel tears forming in the corners of my eyes. I try to talk but I am silenced by her finger on my lips. “It’s okay; you don’t have to tell me, I know. You are going to be alright.” She pulls me in and wraps her arms around me. I return the hug and cry into her shoulder.
This is only the beginning I tell myself. This isn’t going to be easy. But in that one moment on the stairs of her building, I feel at peace with my father, with her, and with myself. For once I am able to break the walls of my own prison. I am free.