Fahckmylife's Blog
Crap adult, OK human.

There often comes a point between the seventh and ninth drink when you find yourself staring in your friend’s bathroom mirror.  You’ve probably been standing there a while  – how long exactly you don’t know – staring at your red cheeks and slightly messed hair.  You might even be checking out your pit stains and cursing the fact that you sweat profusely. At some point though you make eye contact with yourself and any number of things can happen in that split second.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve been having a fantastic night but this one moment can change everything.  Now, sometime s I personally find myself laughing at the state that I’m in or at least curse myself for looking stupid.  Others I make intense eye contact with my reflection and it is like I can see right inside myself in my inebriated state.  It’s like the combination of alcohol, a brightly lit bathroom and this eye contact all synch into this weird moment that generates this mottled epiphany.  I often hate these moments.  It’s like your brain just decided to tell you really important things that you didn’t know or want to know.  Why tell me now brain?  Why?!

Why does this happen?  It is because suddenly you’re alone and the mask comes down?  The alcohol has most certainly weakened your ability to keep up a front.  It’s like your mind decides to make a list of things that you’ve suppressed and throws them at you with gusto.  Then all of a sudden you’re open and vulnerable, even though it is only you that can see it, but your reflection and that intense eye contact forces you to face those things (albeit in an exaggerated form) that you wish you didn’t have to. 

Examples of this include, but may not be limited to:

‘I really shouldn’t be this drunk.  Why am I this drunk?’

‘I am a profusely sad person.’

‘Nothing is going to work out for me ever.’

‘I really don’t love [insert significant other’s name here] and probably never have.  What the fuck am I doing?’

‘Why would anybody bother being friends with me?’

‘What is the point in anything?’

‘Why did that happen? How can I stop that from happening again?’

‘How can I change me to make me better?’

Now, these are all negative, as is generally the case but the thing is once you return to your friends the feeling disappears pretty quickly.  It’s like it never happened, which, annoys me even more.  You adjust yourself back into your comfort zone.  You go back in and paint your smile back on and let these realisations slip away back into your subconscious.  You forget but they happened.  These thoughts flick on and off like a light switch thanks to the mind altering power of alcohol.  I firmly believe  that the majority of people who consume alcohol use it like this as a coping method for life.  A skill that I myself have embraced and accept and have attempted to use productively. 

See, this is why I like drinking on my own sometimes.  I can sit there and just soak it all in.  All the emotional intensity and wallow in my own moroseness and store it all up in the dark deep recesses of my brain.  You never reach a conclusion anyway but feeling shit makes feeling good a lot better.  Forcing yourself to realise your own pain is a good thing, even through the mumbled tones of gargle.  Being sad and facing your weaknesses, be it a need for validation, loneliness, low self-esteem or just generally being a dick is a good thing.   It helps me compartmentalise my already overly cluttered life, forget about it and move on, yet still experience a wide spectrum of emotion.  Without this I don’t think I could write (badly) or know exactly what I want (which, finally, at this point in my life I actually totally do).

I would just like to point out that this is not a frequent occurrence for me but it does happen more than I probably should admit.  Although these fleeting moments may pass many of us by, remember these are a coping method for life, because as most of us should know by now, life is shit.   I don’t think I would be as self-aware if I did not embrace alcohol.  I probably wouldn’t be half as interesting either (not that I’m super interesting in the first place) or have any fun stories to tell.  The point that I am trying to make here is that facing these weird drunken moments as what they are, an exaggerated view of reality, is a great way to sort through your own head.  Instead of fighting them we should let them be what they are, pull your tights up and walk out of that bathroom like nothing happened, never to return to that thought again.