Life follows a simple, dull pattern now. I wake up in the same dull place. I brush my teeth and hair in the same dull way. I dress in the same dull clothes. I don the same cheap, dull shoes. I go to the same dull job doing the same, dull things. Hardly a job at all. I get home with a few dull dollars from the work. I regret dropping out of the dull school in the dull town I was from. I make the same dull tasteless dinner. I go back to sleep in the same dull bed.

My life is a dance, but not a precise one. Not a beautiful one. A dull one, of poorness and sameness. Of regret. I thought as a girl that when i grew up i could do whatever i wanted, go wherever i wanted. I thought I could leave my dull home and live the exciting life that I wanted. I thought I would dance a path made of dreams and hopes, in diamond-studded gold shoes.

Now I work at a gas station in dirty once blue flip-flops, one broken. My house is hardly anything, and much too small for me. It has one door, a broken door. It has many drafts. Only 3 rooms, each barely big enough to fill its purpose. It's filled with trash because I don't know if something I threw away could be valuable enough to get more alcohol.

My dance, every day, is to survive. Try to get more food. Try to stay where I am, in shelter. Dreams are all I have, but they're worthless dreams. I can't get them. And someday I'll step on a broken bottle of alcohol I can't afford to get rid of and it will be infected. I won't be able to afford a hospital.

Then I'll die because I can't give up my enemy. Or my friend. And maybe when i die it will get better. Maybe I'll have more than smoke dreams and a vice cage. A vice cage keeping me from everything. I don't have a car, because every time I try to save money it goes into alcohol.

I'll show up to work drunk soon and lose my job. Then maybe I'll starve to death. Yet the alcohol has a silver tongue and I can't let it go. Soon I'll have to resort to gambling, and then I'll have another addiction to try and hide. It will drag me further, and maybe I'll starve to death because of the money lost. Sell everything I have to try and get a little bit more money, and spend it all on alcohol. Then I'll die.

Maybe then I’ll finally be happy. I don't care what's next when I die. With luck, nothing. I don't want to face God after the life I've led. But anything is better than here. Maybe people will say it's a tragedy. I'm only 26. I don't care. I don't care about anything anymore. Not surviving. Not my job. Not food. Not the dump I call a home. Just alcohol.

I hope they tell my story, a warning to others to avoid this path, where I have only dreams and dirty flip-flops. Maybe when I die I'll have diamond-studded gold shoes. Maybe I'll escape this shabby dance, for one of grace and perfection. A dance of dreams and joy. Maybe I'll just cease to exist. Maybe that would be better.