By Serena
It is Sunday evening so I am hoping for the release of death. I know that I am being perhaps dramatic- that two nights spent putting alcohol in my body may simply be having its consequences. Nonetheless, I cannot help but think the only sensible course of action is a sudden and immediate death. Instead, I will tell housemates that I “have really bad hangxiety lol” and stay in my room, thinking about such things as What I Have Done and The Person I Am Becoming. Wonderful. It’s ridiculously indulgent: navel gazing as self-flagellation.
It has been a rollercoaster of a weekend. Jubilant nights: eyes swimming in their sockets, seeing angels in the Jimmy’s bathroom, possessing but a Woodgate and a dream. Oh to be back there! Slurring obscenities in the smoking area, mouth agape and acrid! Shit-eating grin, doing the dance, having SO MUCH FUN. Forget academic validation, sporting success, reciprocated feelings of love- that’s the good stuff. Things do often take a turn for the worse- blacking out, being replaced by a stranger with my face and my voice and the moral compass of a Spartan. Hungover me is terrified of blacked-out me. It’s Jekyll and Hyde, and Hyde is a D1 rascal- she does not play well with others.
Waking up brings fresh horrors. Sober, finally, I feel the weight of the day in my palm. Nasty ritual I have developed: listless, partially dressed, staring at my phone, half-baked platitudes circling my mind like that will soothe me. Nauseous, shaking slightly, breathing manually- the hangover-resistance of my youth has left me.
First come the resolutions. What a creature I promise to be! No drinking to excess, be more mindful of others… I devise all manner of plans to become a sparkling paragon of virtue. It’s fine! I have been cast as Woman In Her Twenties. Who am I to veer off-script? I have a responsibility to the fans. The path to self-actualisation is paved with humiliation, I tell myself. This is simply growth in disguise. I’m in the bargaining stage, junkie limbo (my drug of choice being… Isla Negra?). An Augustine confessional- “Lord make me chaste, but not yet!”. Promises to ‘be better’ like so many Hail Marys, sycophantic and hollow. My insides are necrotic but my heart is hopeful.
This optimism eventually fades, of course. The world is colder on Sundays. Christian vindication, I suppose. Sabbath, day of rest and repentance and a very Catholic kind of guilt. Mutatis mutandis, I will be delivered from sin. I know things are bad when I go all ‘New Age’, listening to Ram Dass and googling “Ayahuasca retreat UK”. Pick a god and pray, baby! It hits four PM and gets dark- there is no reprieve to be had tonight, no warm light of absolution. I realise I am the architect of my own misery. I want my mother, or some abstract concept of my mother. My teetotal housemate has just been for a run and is off to the library. I hate her with every fibre of my being.
Tomorrow will be a new day, I am sure. Next weekend I will put on a similar performance. Is it all worth it? Hard to say. Is it worth Sisyphus getting to the top of the mountain? Seeing a big rock roll down a mountain is always pretty cool. Amen to that.
Featured Image – Toby Dossett