I’ve seen what alcohol and drugs can do to a person, and it’s made me realize how important it is to distance myself from that world. The bar, in all its dim lights and hazy promises, is one of the most dangerous places on Earth. It destroyed my father, and it’s taken Katarina too.
The bar pulls people in, one drink at a time, one night after another, until they become strangers even to themselves. I begged her to stay away from that life. I warned her about the pull of that scene, but slowly, she was transformed. The beautiful, kind-hearted girl I once knew has been swallowed up by the shadows, lost to a world that thrives on escape.
My father was the same. The bars called to him, and over time, they took everything good in him and left only emptiness. Now, seeing the same change in Katarina, I understand with painful clarity the dangers of these places, places that attract the desperate, the reckless, and the lost.
I’ve always avoided bars, knowing they’re a magnet for people who are only passing through life, living for the next drink, the next fleeting thrill. The bar she chose was no exception—a dingy room with dirt on the floor, a place that reeked of lost hope and faded dreams. Yet, she went there, spent her time there, surrounding herself with people who had nothing to give and everything to take.
It’s hard to reconcile this image with the girl I loved—the girl who was once my perfect companion, my best friend, someone I wanted to spend my life with. Now, she’s just another face in the bar, another story that got rewritten in the haze of the nightlife.