It's interesting to see the conflicting emotions flash across her face.  She is scared.  Afraid.  Anxious.  Miserable.  The cover girl for a depressed teenager if only she was still in that time of her life.

With her arms hugging her bent up knees, she sits perched on a chair in the kitchen with her chin resting on them.  Her long hair falls across her face, messy and wavy from the rain and she has on that wonderfully pouty mouth and solemn brown eyes that show life only when she's happy.  Or drunk. 

I can see the tears welling up behind those eyes; feel the hot burn of salty water that makes them glisten.  The dim light coming from the moon seen in full outside the kitchen window gives an eerie glow to the area surrounding her, encompassing the figure, the table, and the bottle.

I remember the particularly bad day she has had.  Taking a double shift and filling in for three other nurses who called in sick.  The shortage today really showed.  Multiple traumas including a car accident that left a little kid crippled.  Those are always the hardest.  Getting yelled at because of her inability to be in four places at once and finally a break cut short when a visitor showed up at the hospital admit desk.  After weeks of hearing nothing from him, her brother decides to show up and announce another decision made in a split second.  Two months ago, it was the purchase of a brand new car.  How he paid for it remains a mystery.  This time, it is an engagement.

By the time she had him straightened out, they had gone through World War III in the lounge and ended with him stomping out and yelling at the lack of support from his big sister.

All this escalated into something that is entirely my fault.  I know she would not use the bottle as the ultimatum if it wasn't for me.  It was a stupid fight about some random patient and a chart gone askew that doesn't seem to matter so much now, but at the time, I didn't know about her unexpected visitor.

Even though I know that deep down she understands I didn't really mean what I said (if it was any other time, it would take us an hour or less to find each other and do the traditional kiss-and-make-up) as the issue wasn't really important and I understand she wasn't upset simply because I yelled at her, the reality of it is that we had a fight.  And at that point all she needed was someone else to drop her and I was the one who did it. 

I understand her, at least I think I do and desperately want to.  But a big part of me feels immense sadness and an even greater part is overcome with anger and rage.  How could she? How could she even consider resorting back to the one thing in her past that she was able to mend?  It's ironic how every time she loses control or feels like her life is spinning into an alternate reality, she resorts back to alcohol; the one thing in her life she can control and fix.  Everything else: her failed marriage (in which communication was the problem and two people growing distant cannot be resolved through simple counseling.  Life just doesn't work that way.  The base of a person's evolution and personality cannot be changed with a simple visit to the doctor's office with the declaration, "Fix Me.") and her family (it's just genetics, isn't it?), is beyond her control.  I wish she would understand that no matter how hard she tries, she cannot fix what is already broken beyond repair.  There will always be missing pieces from the puzzle of her life because nothing is perfect like that. 

She wants to be the superhero.  Her personality needs it.  But some people can't be saved and even if they can, she has already attempted to leap to the rescue ten times over. 

I know she tries not to care.  After over ten years of coping with her mother and battling the disease, she has learned that her mother has left AMA a long time ago.  After being hit with the same unwelcome results (like a science experiment gone wrong because of faulty equipment), she has become a pro at following the pattern.  Always knowing what will come next: the square, then the circle, followed by the triangle, but the factor of never knowing what colour will be offered gets her every time.

Will it be blue? Sadness and deep-sunk self-pity on the verge of death?

Or red? Rage and madness strung into the kaleidoscope of everyday life leading to an impending disaster.

Perhaps yellow? The best one of all.  Tranquility, bringing with it the gift of a long-lost mother and friend.

False hope and love keeps her from leaving well enough alone and shutting down completely.  It is, after all, her family she has to deal with.  No person with any sense of emotion can turn their backs on family, even when there are more than a few nuts included.  Then, there is of course, the tiny bit of hope that goes against all things scientific and medical.  The false belief that one day everything will go back to the way they used to be, when life was so much simpler and birthday wishes and presents were always remembered.

It is stability and dependence she longs for even while she has strived so hard to be independent.  She desperately wants her baby brother back.  The one she could always count on and protect when family problems came to be too much.  The one who has always loved her through thick and thin and never faltered.  He was her distraction from reality and even though he is the younger, without his strong roots and thick wall, she can no longer survive the winter of her life. 

Before, she was climbing the mountain.  But now, she is up on the cliff and leaning on the edge.  One gentle push or change in wind direction will push her over the edge and lead her to grasp onto anything for the life she doesn't want but needs so much of at the same time.  It is as if she cannot find anything secure to hang onto, even though she has the strength to do it.  She keeps grabbing onto loose rocks and thin twigs hanging off the edge of the mountain.

She has yet to realize that I am the strong branch she needs.  I will offer my wings in which she can hang on to.

As I stand leaning against the doorway of the kitchen, out of her sight and peripheral vision, I am simply an outsider looking in and wondering what is going on in her head with her eyes staring at the full bottle and a face that has now turned expressionless.