Time in a Bottle

Claudia closed the door of the apartment behind her, turned the lock, slid the chain into place and slowly got herself over to the couch where she sat down, breathing hard, without even removing the heavy wet boots and wool coat she had come in the door with.  Slumped over on the edge of the couch, she put her head into her still gloved hands and starting rocking back and forth.  She wanted a drink so badly she was salivating.   Her mind was somehow outside of her, her body screaming demands, aching for a shot of alcohol.  Her body had become accustomed to getting through the day at work without a drink; it was a controlled environment where it was easy enough to convince herself that there was no point even thinking about it, but when she got home, it was a different story.  Walking through that door into the sanctity of the apartment she shared with no one, her mind went into overdrive every time.   

Today was even worse than usual; she felt as though she was falling apart at the seams; the craving for a drink taking up every inch of her.  Her mind was reeling; she was consumed with an overwhelming feeling of fear and contempt for everyone and everything that had ever touched her life to this point.  The anti-depressant drugs she had been on for more than a decade weren’t working anymore; increasing the doses had done nothing to ease the depression, and the drugs were aggravating her already damaged liver. She felt hopeless, absolutely hopeless; full of fear and anxiety; a broken spirit living in her own private hell as she rocked back and forth, head in hands, her woolen gloves soaked with tears.  Claudia had stopped drinking four long years ago and here she was, on the edge of a breakdown, salivating for a drink, her mind and body going out of control.

Claudia was the oldest child in a family of six whose father abandoned them before the sixth child was born.  He was a man with a gambling addiction; that's about all Claudia ever knew about him because her parents argued and fought endlessly about his gambling losses.  His paycheck rarely made it past the racetrack, which caused the young family a great deal of insecurity and economic hardship, the grocery money or the rent money gambled away month after month.  Every time he lost all the money betting on horses at the track he would try and sneak into the house late at night when he thought everyone would be asleep but Claudia's mother Rose would always be waiting for him and the fight would begin.

"Where's your paycheck?" she would whisper hoarsely into the darkness, trying not to wake the sleeping children.

"My paycheck is my business woman!" he would yell back at her.

By now, all the children would be startled out of their slumber with the little ones crying as Rose screamed back.  

"You've been to the bloody track again haven't you!  You might as well just shove that money up some horse's ass for all the good it does!" and with that she would crawl into bed with one of the kids and cry herself to sleep as her husband stormed back out into the night.

The sixth child was the last one because he disappeared one day when he went out for a pack of cigarettes and was never seen or heard from again.  Life was bad enough with him but it was soon to become even worse without him.  His leaving set them down a path of hardship and struggle that would impact their lives forever.

Claudia’s mother Rose never re-married and carried the overwhelming burden of her large family alone.  Rose suffered from undiagnosed mental illness and chronic depression, which made her an easy target for some of the sleazier characters always on the