I walked out of the house and took a long hard breath. I can’t believe I live like this. With a single Mom that is an alcoholic, who doesn’t know how to parent. My Mom had me at a very young age, when she was seventeen. I’m seventeen now, but I would never make a mistake like that. She has always treated me poorly even at a young age, but I’m sort of used to it. She doesn’t care about my school work at all. Once I got a 106 percent on a really hard math test. When I got home, I told her with so much excitement all she did was nod and go back to watching Dancing with the stars and drinking her favorite wine. I don’t think she knows how to be a parent.

I remember when I was in 3rd grade, we went to a pumpkin patch because I really like halloween and she ended up leaving me in the corn maze because she didn’t have any cell service on her phone. The thing is, she never told me she was leaving the maze. I was stuck in there for over two hours until she looked up from her phone and realized I was gone.

Once I got to school, I found my best friend Leah standing outside of my locker, like she always does in the morning. Leah is perfect. First of all, she is the nicest and prettiest girl i’ve probably ever met. She has on older brother who is the head of the football team and the sweetest younger sister. She lives with her whole family in practically a mansion with a huge pool and a movie theater. Everyone in school knows their family considering how rich they are. For some reason I feel sort of cool being her best friend. You can always find her family doing fun things all together. Whether it's playing tennis at their country club or having a family photo shoot on the beach in Mexico. Then there's my mom and I. The only thing we do together is watch The Bachelor together every monday night. I wish I had a family like Leah does. An older brother to protect you and a younger sister for you to protect. And, not to mention two stable parents instead of one parent who is completely crazy.

Later that day, Leah and I went back to her house. The first time I went to her house in 4th grade, I was amazed. I’d never seen anything like it. I walked up the beautiful concrete steps and found a huge house in front of me. I felt like an ant compared to the house. I rung the doorbell and their maid/nanny Anna popped up in front of me. I couldn’t believe they had a maid to help them, how crazy is that? A minute later Leah grabbed me and pulled me into the mansion. We walked up to her bright pink room. She told me to put my shoes in her closet. When I walked in, I was expecting to find a regular closet like mine but hers went on and on. I felt like I was walking into a store. If you couldn’t already tell, Leah’s family is loaded. Whereas my mom and I are a little bit different. My mom doesn’t have a steady job. She gets all of her money mostly from my Grandparents and from my job at starbucks. We have been saving up for college since I was in 4th grade. Even though my mother doesn’t care much about me, she wanted me to have “a bright future, just like I do,” as she called it. But, that bright future all started crumbling on my last day of 11th grade.

I woke up that morning so excited for my last day. Finally the day I was waiting for had come. I could call myself a senior in only a few hours! Little did I know what that day would bring. I grabbed my bag and said goodbye to my mom. She smiled at me, swishing some red wine around in her mouth. College was only one year away and I couldn’t wait to get out of the house! I heard a loud thud just as I closed the door. Thinking it was the door closing, I walked out into the warm summer sun. Thirty seconds later I heard a roaring scream. I dropped my backpack on the side of the road and opened the creaky door. I found my mom laying on the floor with her wine glass shattered next to her. She had been drinking so much  that week and I even hid all her drinks under my bed but nothing worked. Something was bound to happen to her. My hands trembled as I dialed 911. A few hours later, I was at the hospital, not at school to hear the final bell. I had been in the emergency room for hours waiting to hear results on my mom. Finally the doctor showed up to inform me on what had happened.

“Hello, well we have found that your mother has had a severe heart attack and we looked to see what the possible cause could have been and we think that was it was from the excessive amounts of alcohol. Does this sound familiar?” I nodded.

“Well, the only thing we can do at the moment is perform a type of surgery, I can give you more details about it later but as of now, If we don’t execute her surgery soon, she could possibly die.”

The money that we have been saving up for my college tuition was basically the most amount of money we had. This surgery costed just the amount I had for college. The only thing I could do was use it for the surgery. I closed my eyes and pictured my life in my head. Pieces of it started to fall off just like when you take a bite into a cookie. One by one by one my life was slowly starting to fall apart. I thought of where I would be in 20 years, on the street with no family, a dead mother who drank too much and still no father to take care of you. You will have no job because you never went to college.