It feels like I haven’t seen the sun in weeks, and I wear an expression to match.
I’ve been drinking a lot lately. More than maybe I ought to. Drinking to the point where parts of the night are a blank and I end up in places, unsure of how I got there. Ubers, bedrooms, bars, living rooms. Unfamiliar hands on my face, my waist, my legs. Numbly assenting because what the hell, it saves me the trouble of getting back home.
I spend a lot more time indoors now, ‘cos of the weather. It’s cosy, people try to tell me. People on the internet mainly. Women with long, delicate fingers, gold rings, perfectly trimmed fringes, a world away from my own in the aftermath of its ravages with the kitchen scissors. They post photos of themselves in perfectly messy beds, posed with books they probably aren’t reading, coffee in mugs with improbably shaped handles. For a few minutes after seeing these images I’m inspired. There is a stack of dogeared, musty paperbacks by my bed with bookmarks or receipts or train tickets stuck part way through them, and I tackle one with renewed vigour. My interest fades after twenty pages or so, and I feel myself sinking further and further into horizontality.
If I stay inside this fucking apartment any more than I already do I’ll go crazy. Crazier. Overlooking the brown river below my window, watching the dead tree branches against the slate sky, like the uninspired scribblings of a toddler. I need to be out. But it’s cold out. So go inside somewhere else; go where there’s music and lights and people.
That’s why every weekend night, sometimes weekdays too, I’m down at Donny’s. Or The Crying Martyr. Or Shaky Knees. A drink in my hand. I rarely buy drinks anymore, they just sort of appear in my hand. Shows a lack of instinct for self preservation, I know. My feet constantly sore from the heels I cram them into. Despite the cold, the rain, the snow, my legs are bare. A jacket barely worthy of the name stuffed into my tiny but surprisingly capacious bag.
My limbs are peppered with random bruises and scratches in the mornings. I can’t remember receiving them. My mouth tastes foul, like something died in it during the night. My tongue like sandpaper and my eyes glued shut with mascara. Ta-da, see mum, see dad, this is where two degrees got your daughter.
Sometimes, when I’m at the bar or on the dancefloor, I think wistfully about being in bed alone at home with a mug of tea, my hair freshly washed and a book I actually want to read open in front of me. How civilised that seems, how well adjusted. What am I doing, pissing away my twenties in a series of drunken stupours? This isn’t how healthy, happy young people behave, I should go, I should—but then someone grabs my waist or hands me a drink and I’m off again, a dizzying carousel of faces and lights and hands and tongues.
The nights I’m not drinking I go for runs. In the dark, in the park near my apartment I run in the cold, my legs stinging with it, my headphones too loud, the breath in my chest coming in sharp, painful spikes. I run with a personal vengeance, as if bearing a grudge against my body, pushing it through the pain and exhaustion—
Not all exercise is good.
Maybe you should be kinder to yourself.
Have you tried yoga?
I hate yoga, I can’t meditate for shit.
The people who can’t meditate are usually the people who need it the most.
Shut the fuck up. Let me run. Let me fill my lungs up with that cold air. Knife-like inhalations. Makes up for all the cigarettes I smoke.
It’s just the weather though, honestly. I feel glum, and angry, and hopeless now, but come May... In the summer it’s different. I’ll be cheerful and optimistic, honest. I’ll get through the week without the promise of intoxication, the solace of apathy once I’m six, seven drinks down and things start to blur gently and wonderfully, the watercolours of my surroundings melting into a warm, fuzzy cocoon.
Unhealthy.
Avoidant.
Deeply concerning.
Lack of self worth.
I worry about you.
I don’t want to hear it. It’s only ever men who tell me this. My girlfriends laugh at my anecdotes; I’ve parcelled them up to be pithy and quirky, the perfect mix of self deprecation and oh my god really??? The men in my life, white men mainly, who think the few years that they have on me entitle them to look at me from atop their high horses, shake their head in concern when I tell them, slightly ashamed, slightly defiant, about what’s happened.
You have to take better care of yourself. I only say this because I care.
Do you think this sort of behaviour is maybe indicative of your poor self esteem?
I worry a lot about you. Maybe you should go back to therapy.
They’re not wrong but hell, it’s that tone I can’t stand. Holier-than-thou-slut-shaming-disguised-as-concern-for-my-welfare bullshit. Just because they can’t get laid, just because you know I can’t sleep with strangers, it just feels wrong. Oh, I’m not really into that sort of thing. When has male chastity become a point of pride? Why have the men in my life suddenly become such prudes?
I don’t remember the last time I hugged someone who didn’t want to fuck me.
Is work not fulfilling you?
Maybe you should try new hobbies?
There are other ways to self harm that don’t involve blades or starvation or—
Yes, yes thanks, I heard it all. Work is only eight hours in a day and oh my god the days might be shorter now but still they drag their heels, still I feel trapped in the 5-12 after my 9-5. I’m only 23 how the fuck do I fill the time until I’m 30?
Because by then, of course, my life will be together, right? I’ll have the husband, the kid, the cat, the career. I’ll have publications and conferences to my name. I’ll be busy but content. That pile of books will have been read. I’ll be able to tell you with confidence which wine goes with quiche, and which with pasta. I’ll stop feeling like its a chore dragging myself from bed every morning, I’ll stop feeling like every minor task is insurmountable, that god this week, every week, is kicking my ass but come Friday I can let loose, smoke a joint, have a couple drinks, feel my shoulders loosen and my jaw unclench.
Fuck that, I don’t even have to wait until 30. Come the Spring, come the warm weather, the sun, I’ll be whole again, I’ll be okay, right? The summer months will fix everything. I’ll run, not out of anger but because I love my body and I should look after it the way it looks after me. I’ll enjoy a drink here or there, not because sobriety pains me but because it’s the social thing to do. A cosmopolitan on the patio or a Peroni while playing pool with friends, what could be more civilized than that?
Come Spring, it will be alright again. It has to be.