drunk

on being drunk and losing my sense of self

tw: I mention vomit. many times. I know that’s gross, I’m so sorry.

Last weekend, I had a Saturday night off for the first time in what has felt like months. I was so excited to finally have a normal human weekend night to spend hanging out with normal human people at some place where young people go to see and be seen. In an attempt to be super cool and fun, I met my friends at a local bar for a few drinks, only to end the night spinning out, vomiting on my friends’ living room floor, and leaving the function without my shoes because I couldn’t remember where they were and couldn’t be bothered to find them. This act might have been acceptable for a nineteen year old college party girl, but for a twenty-four year old who had to work a double shift the next morning, it was quite pathetic. Sitting on the floor of the gender-neutral restroom at the restaurant I work dry heaving over the toilet at eleven in the morning was a humbling experience. I only have myself and my lack of moderation to blame. And maybe a little bit of a genetic predisposition to addiction. But mostly, just my own poor decision making.

This has been a recurring theme for me- overcorrecting my lack of self confidence by taking too many shots to impress my friends that go out every weekend with my ability to keep up with them (I can’t) and be cool (I am not). I ordered a round of straight Rumple Minze for the table, which makes my stomach turn just typing out the words. If you don’t know what Rumple is, consider yourself lucky. It’s a Listerine flavored liqueur known for being probably the cheapest thing behind the bar. It’s horrific. I took two shots, neat. I actually have to change the subject because as I’m typing this I’m genuinely getting nauseous. Anyway, I did all this knowing I had planned to drive my car home. When my girlfriend showed up to the bar a few hours later- something she does not do often- she was  floored at how drunk I was, despite my texts to her being mostly coherent. I pride myself on mastering the art of disguising my drunken state over text. I may type in slow motion, one painful letter at a time, pouring all my focus on stringing together normal sentences, but it usually works. For the record, I only drank one glass of wine, two shots of [redacted] and one mixed shot of something pink, which in my college days would have been nothing, but now, in my elderly age of twenty-four and some change, nearly put me in a coma. My girlfriend thankfully drove us to our friends’ house down the street to continue the party. I thought I would sober up on their couch and be on my merry way in a short hour or so. I was wrong. 

One bong rip later and the room was spinning. I feel like when I normally get “The Spins” it’s in more of a circular motion like a top spinning on the floor, but the room was spinning more as if my brain was a bowling ball making its way down an alley at top speed. I was convinced that this was how the world always felt but we don’t notice it when we are sober, kind of like how you can only see your nose when you think about looking for it, and I was only experiencing this since I had broken some sort of fourth wall. I was unwell.

I’ve only broken though this “wall” two other times in my life- once when I was about twenty and spent the night drinking an insane amount of Ciroc on a dare, and another time when I was twenty-two and ate about five grams of psychedelic mushrooms because I didn’t know five grams was a suicidal and idiotic amount of mushrooms to eat. 

What do I mean by “broke through the fourth wall” exactly? It feels like pulling back some kind of curtain and gazing into something I wasn’t meant to see, but it’s so obviously right there in front of me all the time. It makes reality dissolve away into nothing but a stage play with phony props and sets. It’s like zooming out the camera on your favorite sitcom and realizing the living room was just a fake three-sided box inside of a sound stage and the actors are all backstage taking off their makeup and returning to their other lives. Of course, it was all just a fake set, what did you expect? How I Met Your Mother isn’t really shot in New York, it’s just a false idea of what people want you to think New York is supposed to look like. I feel as if time and space are not real. I forget what year it is, what city I’m in, what day it is, what time it is, how much time has passed since I was just a child in my old bedroom, thinking maybe I’ll just wake up on the couch and I’m still five years old and I still have time left to keep sleeping in a little longer. I feel like I’m not real. Nothing is real. Maybe I’m in a dream. Maybe I can teleport. I don’t fucking know. I feel insane and unreal and I have to focus on small physical senses to bring myself back down to Earth. I have to feel my head on the wall, feel how cold the bathroom tile is against my skin, focus, Gabby, stay focused, one sensation at a time. My girlfriend, her hair, the feeling of her skin, the fact that she is real, real, real, and the room that I am in is real, real, real, and I’m in St. Louis, which is real, real, real. I panic and sweat and hyperventilate and ask repetitive questions, eyes wide and brain reeling. I have to remember that I am real and this is real. But I feel like my consciousness is a skittish butterfly fluttering around space, maybe I'll land back in my body, maybe I won’t. I wonder what would happen if I let it float away. Is that death? Would I stop breathing if I let my soul untether from my body? I panic and beg my conscious to come back, please, come back to the present moment and help me, I’m begging, please come down here to this reality I need you, you’re starting to fucking scare everyone. I think I’m describing a panic attack. Or a nervous breakdown. Or psychosis. I’m not sure. It’s terrifying.

I hate feeling that way. I hate asking for help. I hate spinning out of control. I just want to be cool. 

Why the fuck do I try so hard to be something I am not? I am not a chill girl who can take shots and act completely normal. Can anyone do that? Why do I want to do that? That’s the question I am constantly faced with the morning after a night out. Why did I want to take shots of Rumple? To impress my friend who says he loves Rumple? (God, if I type Rumple one more time I’m going to lose it). Why do I care if he is impressed? What even is the point of going to the bar in the first place? 

I hate that I have to over analyze every situation I experience but I’m forced to reckon with the reality of my actions when I spin out like that. What was I wanting to accomplish by going to a bar that I don’t really like, drinking liquor that tastes genuinely horrific, getting so wasted I can’t even drive my car home like I planned to, and being so out of control in my own body that I throw up on the floor and feel like the world is moving in reverse?

The answer is simple: I wanted to be cool. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to look hot and meet up with my friends and do the things that they do on the weekends and pretend that I am one of them. I am one of the girls who goes to patio bars and drinks vodka sprites and has lots of friends and knows all the drama and is there for when “the big memorable thing” happens. 

Oh you don’t know about “the big memorable thing”? You had to be there. You wouldn’t get it. It’s just this thing that happened that one time, everyone else remembers it because they were there, but you wouldn’t get it because you weren’t there. FOMO.

I go because I fear that I’m missing out. I fear being missed. I fear not being missed. I fear that if I don’t go to The Patio Bar in The Cool Hip part of The Big City then I am not living up to what is expected of me in my twenties. I’m already behind everyone else. All my friends have Careers(™). The famous Nine to Five. Retirement plans, probably. I’m a loser with a fucking art degree that I can’t even use because nowhere will hire me. I already miss so much because while everyone is off work at 5 and going to out Happy Hours, I’m just now clocking into my shift as a loser lame cliche waitress/bartender/freelance artist (let’s be real, I only throw around that word to sound impressive, I’m not. I do about one job a year for someone who is probably a friend/coworker/random guy from the internet who pays me an underwhelming amount of money for something I worked somewhat hard on, but is actually just super unimpressive and quite honestly mediocre and okay if we’re being honest, I trace a lot of things but that’s really only because they’re not paying me very much so I’m not going to work that hard if i don’t have to OKAY FUCK) (but Robert if you’re reading this I’m not talking about you, I love you, please don’t fire me). So, if I can’t be on the same page as them career wise then I should be on their level socially, right? I can go to the bar and drink, I’m a bartender, I know alcohol, that’s fun and exciting, right? Do you guys think I’m cool, be honest? Actually, don’t be honest, please lie to me. My ego is really fragile and I can’t handle being a failure in my career and my social life. 

I drank too much to overcompensate for the fact that I weigh my self worth by how much I want people to like me, so I do the things that I think will make them like me because I’m too afraid to share my genuine truth because then they wouldn’t like me. If I was honest I would say, “what’s the point of this stupid fucking bar! It’s too loud to talk and too crowded to get a table for all of us to sit at and even if we got a table, what would we do after that? Play a card game? But no one is paying attention because we can’t fucking hear each other! The music sucks, if it’s going to be this loud at least make it something I can dance to. There’s way too many men here and I don’t give a fuck if they think I’m hot, I know I’m hot already, please stop looking at me. I just want to dance or gossip or scream or cry or feel something other than this overwhelming sense of anxiety and dread and confusion and small talk over shitty drinks and quite frankly, what is the point of anything anymore? Are you guys happy, genuinely?” (am I just describing that scene from the Barbie movie?) 

I just want to be somewhere where the drinks taste good, the music is good, there’s more women so I feel safe, and for the life of me I cannot figure out what people like about these kinds of bars. If we want to talk, we should go somewhere with a table and quiet music, or if we want to dance, we should go somewhere with a dance floor and better music. I don’t for the life of me get the appeal of these “standing room only” kind of bars where I’m constantly yelling, “WHAT DID YOU SAY?” in my friend’s ear because it’s loud and I can’t tell what’s going on.

I don’t want to be old and lame and boring and tell them this. I don’t want them to feel bad for liking these kinds of spaces. If that’s what you like, go for it. But also, I want to be invited. I want to feel included. I want people to be like, “man, I wish Gab was here. She’s so fun and adds so much to my life and all social interactions are lacking because she isn’t here.” But I know that’s not true because the whole fucking world doesn’t revolve around me! Spoiler alert! Only my world revolves around me, but my world is fucking spinning out because I don’t like myself! Of course I got so drunk I threw up on the floor and told my girlfriend repeatedly though a mouth full of a half chewed bagel that she lovingly toasted for me, “I’m not okay” because I’m not fucking okay, okay?! I want to be someone that I’m not, or some version of myself that I no longer am, I don’t know how to be this current version of myself. 

I can’t stop thinking about the past, about college days gone by, about missed connections, decisions I should have made, about high school (maybe I peaked back then, I was the homecoming queen and now look at me? It's a curse for a reason). The other day, I read through my old diary entries from my first two years of college and they were brutal. I had barely any friends, I picked a ridiculous major based on youthful passion instead of realistic concrete facts, and I refused to listen to anyone because I was just so sure of myself back then. So blindly confident that I could make things happen for myself. Where did she go? I’ve been writing ‘LOVE YOURSELF’ in my diary since 2012. I’m still waiting for it to happen. 

Self confidence and self love are not interchangeable concepts. Confidence can be faked. Love cannot. Confidence is self assurance, it’s bravado, it’s presence, it’s nerve, it’s believing in some aspect of yourself beyond any doubt. Self love? I’m still trying to figure that one out.

Is it bubble baths and face masks and weighted blankets? Is it saying affirmations in the mirror every morning until you believe they’re true? Is it buying yourself flowers and writing your own name in the sand? I tried to fill out a worksheet in one of my many (so fucking many, and how have they actually helped yet, huh?) self help books and I stared at the prompt with my pen frozen in my hand and didn’t know how to answer the question, “how do you show yourself love?” I don’t know how.

A better place to start I guess would be to ask what is love in the first place? It’s patient, it’s kind, I know all that bible verse bullshit, but what does that mean? To love another person means to listen without judgment. To care ferociously. To respect. To be committed. To tend to their needs like a fire needs to be stoked. To want the best for them. To be affectionate and passionate and lift them up. I want to do that for myself. I try to do the basics: go to the gym, be in nature, meditate, go to therapy, read the damn self help book, take the bubble bath, put down that phone, say those positive affirmations- why then, don’t I love myself? Why can’t I figure this out? I like myself, sure, but when I wake up with dried Thai food in my hair, I’m not respecting myself. Why does my need to be perceived as something more than who I am supersede my need to be who I already am? (does that sentence make sense?) I’m scared to not be enough. I’m scared I don’t know who I am. 

My identity used to be tied to my academic status or my hometown or what I wanted to be. Someone says, “tell me about yourself”, what do you say? I used to say, I’m from Waterloo, I go to Missouri State, I’m studying illustration, I’m working at a Mexican restaurant, I want to be a storyboard artist, I want to move to Atlanta, I want to work for Cartoon Network and create the next best thing since Adventure Time. That’s fucking hilarious.

For my whole life I have only known one thing and it’s that I’m the Creative Sarcastic Middle Child. I had big dreams of being an artist and that’s all anyone knew about me. Every relative would buy me some sort of paint set or oil pastels or artsy fartsy so and so or gift card to Michaels at Christmas because I was The Art Kid. It’s all I know. It’s all I’ve been told. All I’ve ever been is sarcastic and artsy and I’m terrified of the reality that I’m a very mediocre artist. 

I’m not as passionate as I used to be. I’m not applying to Graphic Design jobs anymore because they scare me. I’m terrified of the idea of being forced to be creative and innovative and make new, new, new, more, more, more, faster, faster, faster. I don’t think I have what it takes to be a designer and not burn out. I don’t know the first thing about storyboard art, to be honest. Animation is a fucked up job market right now, ask the team behind Inside Out Two. I lost a creative job opportunity that I worked on for weeks to fucking AI generated art (true story). I don’t know what I want to be anymore. I don’t know what career to apply to. I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know how to move forward. I don’t know where I want to live or what I want to do or who I want to be and I feel so hollow. I just want to be cool.

—

I’m writing this while sitting at my favorite coffee shop, the one with the mannequin hanging from the ceiling and the many gnomes on the shelf. The door is propped open and the weather is delicious- blindingly sunny but just a liiiitle chilly if you’re sitting in the shade. There are lush green plants and fall colored flowers outside (it is called the Garden Cafe for a reason) and a small panel of stained glass I never noticed before is making a patch of technicolored light on the carpet in front of me. I’m sitting at a table I don’t normally sit at, admiring the gallery wall of hand drawn portraits of musicians that have played at the shop before (I’m guessing? I’m not sure but they’re all playing music and they’re all signed). The shop is rather slow today, people trickle in one or two at a time but mostly just to take their coffee to go. I brought headphones but decided not to use them. I’m listening to the baristas gossip about who knows what and you-know-who to pass the time. A couple old ladies are having a drink on the patio which I think is sweet. My great aunt died this week and I cried in my car last night thinking about how horrible it must be for my grandma to grieve the loss of her only sister. They were the kind of sisters who would get coffee together and gossip endlessly for hours. The person closest to me has been working on homework for a while, sitting by themselves on a hideous lovely old floral print couch. They made small talk with the workers about the essay they were working on- maybe they were friends? Classmates? Coworkers? A moment ago, they went to their car and came back inside with a small gift for the baristas: two tiny fish sculptures that they made by hand. It was precious. The baristas squealed at the small treasure. One of them proclaimed, “this is my most prized possession” and proudly put the tiny fish on display and started telling customers about it. I thought that was beautiful. I want to cry. Maybe things are going to be okay.