"What are you doing here?" He spat out, his voice bitter and distant.

"I live here." I replied, raising my voice so he could hear me clearly "That is more than what could be said about you."

He stumbled slightly but he did not fall.

"Where have you been the past month?" I asked, trying to keep my posture and my words strong.

He did not need to answer. The stench of whisky and vodka and every other alcohol was overpowering from metres away.

My father slumped back on the chair at the table, and he closed his eyes where slurring "This place is not home anymore."

Derek Miller was once a lawyer at a big firm. He did not make a fortune out of his job but it was enough for us to be comfortable.

Instead of a big house, my parents decided to buy a small apartment and focus on travelling the world. Our apartment was only the place we stayed when I had school to go to and could not go with them on vacation.

That was all until my mother decided to leave us and my father started drinking.

At my mother's funeral, one of her friends came up to me and said that my father just needed time to grieve. I feared that no time long enough would heal him. Sometimes I sympathised with him and sometimes I resented him.

It was wrong but sometimes I really did hate him.

My father left for weeks on end. He only came back to pay the bills and leave some money for me. He also came back for a duffel bag of clean clothes.

I often wondered where he got the money to pay rent and to live. It was certainly not from the law firm that had fired him six months prior.

I changed my tone, so it was harsher when pointing out "You did not answer my question."

"She made it like that." He uttered quietly.

He was acting like I did not also lose my mother. Like I was not losing my other parent.

"No." I bit out agitatedly "You did."

Just as I was, he was too dealing with the loss of her. It was just in a way that meant he was never present. A way that offered no comfort to me.

I did not want to break again. I had already cried.

Crying was never something I had seen as a weakness. I cried a lot, but I had never done it in front of people.

My vision became blurry, so I chose to leave my father where he was and go to the safety of my bedroom.

The wasted white walls greeted me as I closed the door on my way into my room. I slid the lock on the door into place securely.

I repeated the action of bolting the door shut three times to assure myself that I was locked in. It was the only way I could feel at ease when trying to get to sleep.