I’m Way Past It
I was triggered by a situation that came up this past week and thought I’d write some things out because I don’t really want to explain myself over and over again.
When I was in my late 20s, I used to party far too hard with some coworkers of mine. I used to end up at one girl’s house where I and others would drink far too much. I lived on the opposite side of the neighborhood, so at times I could be found stumbling through the streets at 2 a.m., intoxicated off a bottle of Southern Comfort. It wasn’t great in retrospect, but I thought I was having fun at the time.
What I didn’t enjoy was the hangovers. Some days it would take a full 24 hours to recover. Sometimes my system would be so messed up the next day that I couldn’t even keep water down. There was also the morning that scared the ever-loving shit out of me where I found myself craving a drink at 10 a.m. after a night out. That’s when I knew I had to fight that devil off of me. I didn’t drink for a while after that.
There was also the time when my coworker’s boyfriend or his acquaintance stole my original iPhone. He was supposedly a recovering addict, but I have my doubts to this day that he was clean. He used to always feel the need to tell me his entire life story at every gathering that after the third time I learned to tune him out. I didn't like being around him. The night my iPhone disappeared was a wake-up call to me that I needed to watch who I hung around with.
In the years after, my drinking habits changed. By the time I was in my mid-30s, my tastes had shifted to craft beer and, due to having to have a budget because I was an adult living by myself, I eventually capped myself with a two-drink limit. It used to make me laugh a little when my tab was $14 and my friends would push $80–100. Nowadays, I hardly drink at all and, when I do drink, I still keep to that low-end two-drink limit 95% of the time. If anything, I try to avoid being hungover as those suck once you’re in your 40s.
My past experience though taught me those wild experiences don’t come without a slice of drama. Same goes for relationships. I may have had some fun in my past, but the chaos that surrounded that fun isn’t anything I want to take part in again. I’m more geared towards quiet evenings with one or two friends than I am any wild and crazy parties. In some ways, I’m truly too old for this shit, but my experiences and trauma from them have taught me to stay away from the wild shit. If that means I stay at home watching the game with a cat in my lap, then so be it. At least I know I’ll wake up in good shape the next morning and I’ll still have my iPhone.
