Growing up I was always so excited to be an adult – I mean who isn't? I loved how adults could wear what they wanted, drive around in cars, be whatever they wanted to be, and most importantly they could drink. I was fascinated by the idea of alcohol. A drink that not only looks pretty but you end up with the love of your life by the end of the night. Count me in. When I got to high school, I was always looking forward to Friday nights how after the football games a party was bound to pop up. I would show up to them braces shinning waiting until I was handed my first drink. After a handful of drinks, countless conversations, and many bathroom breaks I was finally to drunkenness that I couldn't be pulled out of. And let me make it very clear that I did not enjoy the taste, nor did I find the love of my life. I would wake up on the floor surrounded by people I don't know only to drive back home with a bad taste in my mouth and a headache. Yet somehow in my 16-year-old mind I still thought that drinking was the best and the day after was a minor side effect that everyone had to go through.
As my high school years carried on so did the alcohol consumption. I still felt cool every time I was handed a bottle and I drank from it straight. I thought I was on top of the world living the best years of my life with my best friends around me. That's when the turning point of the night would creep up on me as I slowly went from being on top of the world to feeling worse than the scum on the shoes of everyone crammed in the living room. Whenever I got to a certain point, I just start to self loathe and replay all of the "dumb" things I had done that night. If I had talked to a guy, I created the illusion that no Rachel, he wasn't flirting back he was actually annoyed with me and trying to get me to leave him alone. I would conjure up that my friends that I had come with didn't want to be my friends, they just wanted to leave me alone in the room and go off to find a better one. I found myself always ending up as the crying drunk girl in the corner. The loop of horrible conversations with myself pointing out the worst was my end to every party.
When I got to college, I was so hyped to experience the real "best years of my life". I was ready to go to a party and bump into someone only for them to talk with me the rest of the night and walk me back to my dorm as the sun was creeping up. I learned the hard way that frat parties aren't what they are in movies. They are sticky, sweaty, crowded messes that smell of alcohol and smoke. The only thing that my freshman self left with, was sticky shoes from all the spilled drinks. I would end up back in my dorm crying about anything and everything so hard that my own friends couldn't talk me down.
I was in a constant cycle of drinking then feeling awesome only for within the next few drinks I was hating myself and everything about me. I was telling myself that I was nothing and should be ashamed to be me. I would wake up the next morning feeling nothing but regret as I replayed the number of tears and sobs that flowed from me. I would see in my mind my friends slowly get annoyed with. I couldn't handle my alcohol, not in the sense of waking up next to a stranger but actually putting all the pieces together of myself crying on a constant loop and hating myself for it.
Nobody is perfect. Everyone is going to drink too much, say the wrong things, act in an embarrassing fashion at some point in their life. Even as I am writing this article, I already know that I am going to as well. I am not perfect when it comes to handling myself with alcohol in my system. Yet slowly but surely, I will come to the realization that I honestly do not like drinking, I do not like the taste or the feelings I get from it. I really don't like sitting in the bathroom throwing up and sobbing about how I am so sorry to my friends who are just trying to hold back my hair. The "best years of my life" are in full force right now, and I better have more to me than ending up being that drunk girl crying in the corner.
