Alcohol and I have had a long relationship. The story between us is one full of bad blood and resentment. One of my earliest memories is of alcohol. The memory is short but insightful. I stole a drink from my dad’s cup, one that he brought home with him every day after work, and proceeded to spit it back out all over myself. I cried and ran my hands over my tongue the way a child does when they've tasted something they don't like. The burn in my throat was punishment enough, so my father simply scolded me and sent me off to my mother. I never tried to steal from his cup again.

Maybe this isn't how it actually happened. Maybe the way I remember things is tainted by the way I feel about alcohol as an adult. I lived a pretty blissful life, as a child. I didn't notice that my father drank almost every day. In my earliest days, my father drank around me all the time.

I got home from school at 3:30 p.m., and he came home from work at 4:00 p.m. and started drinking. When I got older, it took me a long time to be able differentiate between a drunk father and a sober father, because a lot of the time I had spent with him had been while he was drunk. But it wasn’t until I was fourteen when I connected alcohol to my family.

I started to connect my parent’s fighting to my father’s drinking. One summer my mom took me to the library so we could check out books like Living with an Alcoholic, and other similar topics. I hid the books under my bed. I knew where my dad kept his whiskey in the basement, so I made it a game for myself to hide his alcohol as often as I could. Under the floorboards, the bottom of the freezer, inside an old tool box. Once I drained an entire bottle down the sink and put the bottle back empty. I thought about drinking myself because I knew he would get mad.

One of my worst memories of high school is of my senior year, when I got caught giving my homework to another student. My teacher told me she would have to call home to my parents to inform them of the situation. Because this teacher just so happened to know my parents, she told me she wanted to speak with my father because she knew my mother would be unavailable. With my peer sitting next to me, I nervously informed my teacher she couldn’t call my father that night. It was a Tuesday, my father's designated drinking night. Caught in both the lies I tried to tell her to convince her not to call, I ended up telling her she might not want to call that night because my father would be drinking.

The thing about my father is that he’s a good guy when he’s sober. He’s never hit me. When I need help, he’ll always help me. He’ll always tell me he loves me. I once met a man my father worked with who told me he was honored to meet the daughter of such a good man. Not a lot of people can say these things about their father. I’m lucky, in this sense.

But when my father’s drunk, he’s different. He tells my mother horrible things. He tells me I’m stupid, that I make it easy for him to call me stupid. He bullies my brothers. And he seems to think it’s all funny. When college started I left home, even though I was attending a local university.

The bad blood between myself and alcohol does not end with my father. Friends estranged from their mothers and fathers. Family members I never knew killed by drunk drivers. My grandparents were alcoholics before I even existed, although after the accident involving the drunk driver, they gave up on drinking. An aunt on one side of the family and an uncle on the other ruined their lives with alcohol. Cousins who have known so much struggle because of their parent’s decisions. Family members that would show up to Thanksgiving dinner already drunk.

So if I tell you I don’t drink because I don’t like the burn of alcohol please consider that 1) It’s true, I don’t like the way alcohol tastes, and 2) That maybe there’s more there than I’m telling you. That if you take me to my first bar and tell me I don’t really know if I don’t like drinking because I haven’t been drunk before, maybe just drop the issue when I tell you I don’t drink.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not hating on you if you drink. This is just how I deal with my problems. Plenty of people have had way worse experiences with alcohol than mine and still like to drink every now and again, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. But when you offer me a drink and I say no, let’s just leave it at that.

Let’s just leave it at that.