It was a cool, September evening. Laughter and joyful conversations filled the air. The night was perfect. Today, we happened to celebrate my dad’s 50th birthday party. The celebration was about 5 years ago and this is a day I will never forget.

Everyone always says that your 50th birthday is the greatest and the most important. I always thought that your 100th birthday would be a huge accomplishment if you get there but I guess not. So, we decided to throw a big birthday party for my dad. Everyone in our family came to celebrate. At the time, I was about 8 years old. I have  2 younger cousins that were there and they were about 7 and 4 years old. We would always play together. The night was going great so far everyone was having food and the adults were drinking and this is probably one of the reasons why the night turned sour. Our family has never been perfect, as a matter of fact not even anywhere close to perfect. We have always bickered over things and have gotten over them but this, we have still never gotten over. Me and my two cousins were inside playing and there was a glass door that lead out to the deck and that was where the party was being held. All of the sudden, we start to hear shouting and yelling. We look outside and see my dad, my uncle, my older cousin (who was about 25) and my aunt's boyfriend bickering. My cousin and my aunt's boyfriend were fighting about something and to this day I do not know what it was about. Soon after, they start shoving each other around, at first I thought that they were just fooling around but then things escalated. Fists started to fly around in the air, my eyes widened as everyone turned around and rushed to see what was going on. I felt my eyes start to water, I was petrified. Everyone stood there not knowing what to do. My dad and uncle tried to break everything up.  They took fire wood and tried to separate each other. My other aunt rushed me and my cousins up into her room. We all started to cry, we were confused and scared. We didn't know what was going to happen. We all stood on top of her bed and waited for what seemed like hours. Finally, I heard my dad walk up stairs and asked my aunt where we were. When he walked into the room we started to cry again, I was relieved to see him okay. He hugged us and said,

“This is why you don’t drink alcohol.”

Drinking has always been a big issue in our family. For years my dad has had a little bit of a drinking problem. He has gotten pulled over before for speeding but I was never in the car. He said he didn’t drink that night but I never believed him. At every party, there is always alcohol and I think that needs to stop. You don't think straight when you have alcohol in your system and this situation really proves how that is a fact.

It was starting to get late and everyone decided to leave. The only people that stayed were my aunt and her boyfriend because he refused to leave the house and when he did go outside he would just stay by the house and not leave. I remember my dad calling my aunt to see how everyone was. We found out that they had to call the cops on her boyfriend in order to get him away from the house and go back home. I couldn't sleep the whole night and I don't think anyone who witnessed it could. Ever since that day, he hasn't been allowed over the house and he hasn't been invited to any of our family gatherings or parties. The only thing I know is that my aunt is still dating him and everything seems to be okay, even though they still have their ups and downs. The good thing is that we have all gotten over this, it has been put behind us.

Expressing the way you feel physically may not be the best decision, especially in this scenario. My family did not think the situation through and didn't process what was going on in this situation, they just acted without thinking. The expression “think before you speak” has been brought up multiple times in my life. What that is saying is to think about what you are going to say before you say it. The same thing applies to actions, think about what you are going to do before you actually do it because if you don't, things can turn out to be a lot different than you anticipated. I have been in situation previously where I acted without thinking and it happens to everyone and everyone makes mistakes, after all we are humans and we are meant to learn from our mistakes.