Time for Once: The Rawest Scene I wrote

One of the themes explored in Time for Once is addiction. I hadn't intentionally planned this theme; instead, I let my main character intuitively take me in that direction and on a journey very close to my own lived experience. 

Today, I'm sharing one of the rawest passages I wrote in Time for Once on my blog, because when life is heavy, this is where I go—to words, to books, and to connection.

Jolie exhaled a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding in, and slipped outside. No one, not Jace or Carrie or Alix, knew the struggle Jolie had lived with since high school. Only the fact that her mother drank. The emotional drain of her mom's problem, the vodka bottles hidden around the house, the number of failed confrontations, all of that Jolie kept to herself.

Jolie thought back to the last bottle she found over a year ago, how she'd gripped the neck of it. Her knuckles white. Desperate to strangle and kill the power it held over her mom. Jolie had walked straight to the back kitchen door and launched the bottle from her hand with such force, she'd shocked herself. It shattered on the concrete patio below. Her mom shouted, red with rage, or embarrassment. Jolie didn't care. And even then, after all that, nothing changed. Even then.

It was only during moments of deafening silence and ink-black darkness, when her defenses lowered, that Jolie could acknowledge the weight of unlived years passing through her. Her mom's addiction had required her to grow up. Had forced her to cope. Back then it'd been by means of McDonald's French fries and high school boyfriends. Totally unhealthy. Totally teenaged. Totally not how she planned to cope this time around. Jolie's permanent departure from the house of hidden bottles was so close. Another month and she'd be out. She'd be broke but free.