Just Another Morning 

Skyler Packard

“Addiction is a monster, and it’s a really difficult monster to fight.” ~Stephanie Beatriz, 2019

It was a spring morning, I woke up and rubbed my eyes to open them to not have any lighting in my house. No lights turned on or anything. Our only source of lighting was during the daytime when the sun was out. I walk out to the kitchen and walk through the pitch-black hallway, with piles of trash and only making a little path through the hallways to get where you need to be. Our house definitely is not the cleanest, trash everywhere, needles laying all around my house from when mom used to shoot up in the middle of the night, cigarette butts everywhere, cans and bottles of alcohol, and clothes and bags everywhere. Mom and Dad weren’t home yet, so they must’ve stayed out to party and shoot up, snort, and drink. “It’s fine,” I thought, going to the sink with a cup with a pile of dishes in one half of the sink. I turned the handle to see if any water would come out of the faucet, and there was none. They haven’t paid The electric, water, or any bill since they started getting high and drunk every night, completely wasting their money. Since there was no water, I wanted to see if we had any bottled water in the fridge, which also doesn’t work and keeps the food cool. Luckily, there was one left, and I took it. I was also hungry, looking in our fridge, which was almost empty anyway, had some expired American cheese, moldy bread, and rotten tomatoes. 

“This is fine,” I said to myself again. So I took the bread and picked the moldy spots off of there and slowly ate the rest of the bread that was still good. I learned how to live with having little to no food since they stopped buying food every week, instead getting takeout three times a week. Looking in the pantry, filled with dust bunnies, there was one box of Fruit Loops that had not expired, and I filled a bowl for my little sister when she woke up. I was used to this, my parents not being home and my house being the usual mess it is. They used to leave me and my sister alone while they went out and partied with some random people. So, like today, I had to get her up, feed her and walk us to school. And when we got home that day, there were dollar bills lying on our little mini coffee table that was covered in weed and white powder, and my parents lay naked, passed out on the couch. I sigh. “This is just fine.” Having parents who are addicts is not fine, it messed my life up. When I would tell myself everything was fine, it wasn’t. Everything was a damn disaster.