How To Save Someone Who's Wasting Their Life Away

I wish that there were a book with that title.
A book that held all the answers to how to help someone near and dear to your heart.
Someone who was hurting inside, and didn't know how to deal with their problems any other way.
But there are other ways.
I wish she knew that.

She's been drinking far too much.
Let me say that again.
Far. Too. Much.

We've been friends for 3 years now.
We're very close.
I love her to death.
Despite her problem.

I've never drunken alcohol in my entire 15 years of life.
Besides what my parents have let me try when they were drunk.

She's been drinking since she was in the 8th grade.
It probably doesn't help that her father is an alcoholic.

...................................................................................................................................................................

Her and a bunch her friends have chosen my house as the official "hang out place".
The place to drink.
The place you won't get caught.
Little ashley is too Innocent.
No one think that she'd have people over to get wasted.
But they never came with an invitation.

It was the night that my parents had gone out to a concert and i was home alone with my little Brother and sister that i finally had to have it stop.
I had just put them to bed when they decided to show up.

They had a water bottle full of vodka with them and an empty one in the car.
Nasty stuff.
Why were they here?
When they knew i wasn't alone?
Just above them, in the window outside my front door, my little brother was sleeping.

I pray to God he slept through all of the horrible things they were saying.

They wouldn't leave.
I told my friend, still semi sober, that they couldn't come here anymore.
She didn't fully understand me.
Alcohol will do that to ya.
They left around 11:45.
Right before my parents were about to get home.
The driver of the car they left in had been drinking.
I was relived to find out the next day that they had all gotten home safe.

When i talked to my friend the day after, she was hungover.
It is terrible seeing a girl, my age, hungover.
I told her that I didn't want her or her friends at my house ever again.
She understood this time.

Now they drink in the desert two houses down from my house.
They hide the alcohol that they have in the brush.
And every once and a while i see them jumping over the fence to go and collect it.
They tell me it's great fun.
being drunk, that is.
I'll pass.

....................................................................................................................................................................

This story now moves into the present.
The other day i went out into the desert.
I found the alcohol they had been hiding.
I didn't know what to do with it.
So i took it.


I didn't dump it out.
Or smash all of the bottles against a wall.
I hid them.
In a place i knew they wouldn't find it.
I did it for my friend.

She just asked me if i had taken it.
I told her no.
I wasn't lying.

was i?

no.
I hadn't taken it.
now she's angry.
I'm not the only one who knows about all of the bottles they hide back there.
She thinks someone else took them.
I asked her what she was going to do.
Her answer.

Go and get more.





I wish there was a book with that title.