I remember

the first time I drank alcohol. It was vodka with orangejuice. Before that, maybe I had taken a sip from daddy's beer but I don't remember doing so. I remember vodka, the disinfectant smell of it, the bitter taste, the warm cheap orangejuice it was mixed with. I remember it tasting bad. I remember the feeling of getting drunk. I remember it calling to me in some level I never knew I had in me. I remember drinking for a long time after that first drink, considering I was barely a teenager. I remember wanting to drink, needing to drink.

Then I remember stopping.

And starting again at seventeen.

I have a problematic relationship with alcohol. It has brought me a lot of grief, it has done damage to my liver (luckily, at young enough and it recovered, not to it's best but good enough not to matter), it has cost me a lot of money... And yet... There's the calling, the burning.

I got strong enough to resist it.