The Drink of Acceptance - - by Shelly Wagner, 10th Grade

And there I sat, in the corner of my cold, dark room, wrapped up in the red wool blanket that my mom gave me when I was 5. I had a ½ empty bottle of Bacardi in the hand and I just felt so lonely. That’s practically how every night has been since my senior year in high school. I’ve been abandoned and on my own since…as far back as I’d like to remember. I was always the odd one out. I had no siblings, no parents, no one that really loved me. Until one day when I met Jill.
Jill was a fine young lady. She was energetic, motivated, social, and was always doing something. Although after she met me, it seemed like she spent all of her time trying to make me happy. It never worked though. She was as clingy as a new puppy to its owner, always following me around, asking where I was going, and she was like that for only one reason. She loved me. I don’t know why either. She told me many times that all she lived for was me, and I couldn’t even care. I had known for a long time that there was something wrong with me. I never really liked girl all that much, they were too weird. I wanted to be with guys constantly, but to cover this all up I went out with a couple of girls. After an incident where, as embarrassing as it is to admit it, a girl that I dated named Cindy said I was “barely a man” while in bed with me, I gave up on women. In the 8th grade, I knew I was gay.
I never seemed to have the heart or the guts to tell Jill why I couldn’t love her, or even see her as something other than that pest I tried to avoid. One day I attempted to tell her, and I almost had the word out of my mouth, I was thinking to myself “just say it, I am GAY!” but it just wouldn’t go. She sat there anxiously, awaiting this big truth I was finally going to expose to her, and it never came. Instead she screamed in my face, telling me I was the most inconsiderate bastard she had ever met in her life. For the first (and only) time in my life, I cried over a woman. Although she was a pest, she was the only friend that I had had. She comforted me and made me feel like I was suppose to be a part of this world, and from that day on, drinking was my best friend.