Sudden Sobriety

It's after the raging night club has cleared out, the music has stopped, and our drink is warm that we find ourselves re-evaluating...again. What keeps us going back to those places is the guarantee to let go of our weekly lives. It isn't that it goes away, or even that we forget about it, but for that moment, we do not care. And that tastes like freedom. What we call a "good night" is sometimes merely a blurry recollection of entertaining things we would never do sober. If only for a night, we get to wear our new outfits and revolve around flashy drinks and those little blacks straw feeding us our medicine. It is when time and money mean the least to us and work and school don't matter either. Heck, where we're sleeping doesn't even matter.

But when we wake up in jeans, with one boot, an empty wallet, 20 minutes to finish a research paper, 21 minutes to get to work, and a cement basement floor cushioning our back, it kind of matters. Then we stand there, clocking in to life again, shamefully chipping away at our faded nail polish. Our eyes heavy, a non-brushable taste left in our mouths, and a couple of aspirin swimming around in our otherwise empty stomachs, we get back to work. And it is these moments when we feel sobriety at its strongest.

But for some of us, it isn't the cold beer or salty margaritas that leave us in the initial haze. Sometimes, it is simply anything that wears on us. Could be money hunger, classes, friends, relentless errands, or just staying up too darn late-again and again. We become so wrapped up in distracting things (whatever the world choses to dangle by our eyes this time), that we forget what we should be focusing on-what makes us happy, how we find enjoyment along the way. It is simply faster to skip over those little things and get straight to the big picture. But how much are we missing? Well, inevitably we sober up. Our past week or year... or two years, becomes a blurred recollection of a life we never intended to live. We wake up and have no idea where we are, how we got there, or who we turned into along the way.

We liked the idea of cute, black, reading glasses and new computers on our laps with a cup of tea nearby. We liked the idea of walking to class in a scarves and unique book bags, carelessly trudging through the pretty leaves. We thought we might have philosophical conversations at our dinner parties and talk about careers with all our new friends. But one day we look around... we sit in sweats and long sleeved t-shirts, un-showered in cold classrooms. We get up late and  rush to those bright rooms where we breathlessly slide into our uncomfortably small desks. We liked the idea of a lot of things. 

Now we are sober and we must learn ourselves again, pry into our past and hope to find something—anything that can remind us who we used to be. But more importantly, learn how we became these numb, lifeless, bodies that share our names. Suddenly every step we take is the walk of shame. And we know it’s going to be a bad hangover.