71 -Alcohol, the refuge that wasn’t

In those first years, 

alcohol became my false sanctuary. 

It steadied the trembling of my hands, 

muted the noise in my chest, 

and promised me silence where there was none. 

But it was never a solution

only escape, 

a hollow refuge that deepened the cracks.

On good days, 

it numbed me into absence. 

On bad days, 

it sharpened the shadows, 

pulling me deeper into a place where light could not reach. 

By the end of the third year, 

my thoughts circled one question

how to end it all without leaving devastation behind.

But there is no such mercy. 

Every ending leaves echoes,

It create a ripple effect,

family, friends, even strangers who only knew me by the mask 

would feel the fracture.

And yet, I came close. 

When my brother lay at his worst in my care,

resentment curdled into anger, 

and life itself felt like a punishment. 

In a drunken haze, 

I crushed tablets into dinner, believing I could disappear quietly. 

He slept in the next room. 

I stood at the stove, 

listening to the whisper that had followed me for months 

the grim reaper’s voice, patient and constant: 

“End it all. End it for you and your brother. Slip into peace.”

My brother doesn’t know this, 

and he will never know 

how close I came to fulfilling what he was wishing in those first years 

how his resentment toward me almost pushed me to the edge. 

That secret remains mine alone, 

a shadow I carry in silence.

Then memory struck back

faces, promises, the fragile threads of belonging. 

I couldn't do it.

I quietly sobbed, 

threw the food away, 

and sat in the silence that revealed how close I had come.

That night I quit drinking at home. 

I still drink with others, 

but alone I do not dare. 

I am too afraid of losing control again, 

too afraid of feeding the hunger that almost consumed us both.

What stopped me was not strength. 

It was not bravery, 

nor honor. 

It was fear

raw, selfish fear. 

I was too weak to follow through, 

too afraid of the ruin I would leave behind. 

And so I stayed.

That day, a part of me died. 

The part that believed escape was freedom, 

the part that thought silence could be peace. 

What remains is stitched together by fear and survival, 

a life carried forward not by courage, 

but by the trembling refusal to let the whisper win.

Fear kept me from making the final choice

fear kept me from doing the thing I thought would end everything. 

That is not a noble truth, 

but it is mine

shame and relief braided together, 

a life rearranged by a moment I could not follow through on.

If this sits with anyone who has stood at the same edge, 

know this

there is no tidy moral here. 

Sometimes fear is what keeps you breathing.

Sometimes the thing that saves you is not courage 

but the small, 

selfish refusal to become the cause of someone else’s ruin. 

We carry the memory of the brink like a scar

visible only in certain lights

and we learn to live with it, 

step by careful step.