1:56 pm
It’s weird how a length of sobriety just kind of makes you grow the fuck up.
Sort of, anyway. 🙂
I was breezing through “the past” last night, and that past included sometimes torturing myself by checking out web sites like Last Night’s Party. I mean, let’s face it, it IS tortuous–if you’re the kind of person I am–to see other people who are “cooler” and “more in the know” getting their party on. The kind of person I am (was) was too shy to wear anything like that, go anywhere like that, hang out with people like that. When I lived in the big city, I definitely tried, though–tried my hardest, if my drinking to excess had anything to show for it.
Someone, somewhere along the way told me that that’s what “the cool kids” do, is go out and have fun. And that, having fun means getting shitfaced and dragging your hair in someone’s (your own?) vomit during a dance move that exposes your ass and thong underwear to everyone in the house, and then, taking off your clothes and making out with/letting someone feel you up/having sex with a stranger.
Now, I’ve been to my fair share of parties, and done my fair share of nonsense, including all of the above. But, there is something about this site that always made me feel…less than. Envious, in a way. Like, not only was I not partying with “famous” people, but I also wasn’t partying THAT hard. Or, hard enough. Or, hard enough to be “young.” And to this day, going on that site reminds me that I’m “old,” or getting there–the days of being young and silly and drunk, hooking up with strangers are over. And, my biggest question to myself is, why the FUCK is this a bad thing?
What I’ve noticed lately–it’s hard not to; just look at some of the ways the half-naked drunk women are rolling around with their glasses of wine teetering in one hand (posed shots, or not?)–is just how glorified drunken promiscuity is. Maybe it’s just our rape culture–we don’t just use women as objects, men are plugged into their role, too (why on Earth would so many college boys think that it’s in any way OK to rape-while-drunk?). Now, I’m not religious, and I’m not that much of a prude. But, I just wonder, why are women being told that this is not only acceptable behavior, but that it doesn’t come at a price? NONE of these shots show the reality of getting drunk, naked, and promiscuous: the risk of assault, or catching an STD, or…losing your soul one hookup at a time.
Every time–and I mean EVERY time–I hooked up with a stranger while drunk or blacked out, I lost a little bit more of my soul. When I met the man who was my friend and is now my lover, I wasn’t even sure if I could have sex sober. What I also realized, once I confronted it, was how shattered my soul was. I had to collect the pieces off my astral floor (haha, just had to throw that in there!), day by day, week by week, month by month–I had to process the reality of all that promiscuity. Of how it drained me. Of how it distanced me from myself, which during the drunkest times in 2009, was becoming darker and darker–if soul acts like a full moon reflecting the sun, then mine was a patch of night sky, a hole of dark ink.
While I grapple with putting my “youth” behind me, which has been so heavily marketed and branded as something you can only have if you’re drinking in dark bars, doing “dangerous” nighttime things (that, let’s be honest, WERE fun in the act); I also grapple with continuing to put my soul back together. And, I wonder, WHO is going to stop using women (and men) with glasses of wine sitting on their raised asses, posing for doggie-style sex, as selling points for a life that is truly not worth living? WHEN are we going to represent that “dark” and “dangerous” lifestyle realistically, with its morning-after regret and decades-later soul loss?
I might just be speaking for myself, as I’m sure there are plenty of people who like having sex with strangers, drunk or sober; who love the excitement they find in it. I wanted excitement, too, but I also more simply wanted to feel loved, to fit in. I drank to blackout for the excitement, for the “opposite-of-bored”; the promiscuous sex was almost an unwanted byproduct of that desperation–I didn’t like it, and I didn’t want to remember it. I liked getting buzzed, and flirting, and letting go…but, it didn’t matter who I was doing the buzzing, flirting, and letting go with, you know? When I drank, it was for me. It just so happened that sex (or something like it) was usually how it ended, and it was better if I didn’t know about that.
(There were also bigger things, like self-loathing, a certain darkness inside–I mean, we all love Depeche Mode and wonder about dungeons, don’t we?–and really, this idea that I somehow didn’t deserve anything better than sex on a cement floor with someone who was at best, an asshole, at worst, abusive.)
On this Sunday, I am in a somber mood, thinking about all this. But, it’s part of getting sober. And, it’s part of solving–or at least pondering–a larger problem here that I can’t begin to get into but that I know affected me and my drinking LONG before I even picked up that first glass of wine.
Drunky Drunk Girl 