Scenes From A Hangover

“It’s bad,” she said to herself.

She woke up, fully clothed. Sitting upright, feeling wrong.

She felt around for her phone.

Her eyes ceased to open.

“Where am I?”, she asked an empty room.

She forced her eyes open.

She looked around. Home. Her apartment.

She looked to the left. Empty.

She sighed, relieved. She looked out the window. Twenty inches of snow blanketed the street.

“Oh, snow, I forgot about you.” she said, dramatic. “How I wish my life was this street, muffled and soundless. Covered with something new, fresh, clean. OH, UNKNOWABLE SNOW.”

She ran to the bathroom and threw up.

She felt better. She made SuperPretzel Bites and drank a Coca-Cola on the couch.

It was nine a.m. Her head throbbed.

“Death! How I yearn for the sweet release of timeless death. That master of what is not known, that awesome relief. Death by hangover! It has happened, I daresay it will happen again. How I long to be it’s next companion, DEATH DEATH DEATH!”

She finished the pretzels.

“I think I’m still drunk”, she said to no one.

“I hope I don’t have to go to brunch.”

twenty four

i spent this past weekend in vermont with my friends and sister. we made the drive up on friday and for the next few days, we sat in the hot tub and drank until our faces were red from heat and our jaws ached from laughter. we played punch for punch, built fires and recorded songs on matt’s flipcam. some of us skied black diamond trails while others watched random Olympic sports on the television. we snuggled on the pull-out couch and in each others beds and arms. we took three hundred silly pictures, three hundred inside jokes.

we came home last night and today i turned twenty four.

my coworkers bought me lunch and flowers. my boss got me a book that i had mentioned i wanted to read weeks ago. my friends and family texted and called and wrote on my facebook wall. they remembered.

my parents called me and told me how much they loved me, how important i was to them. 8:34 on a sunday night, they said. that’s when our lives changed.

after work, my friends took me out to dinner. we laughed and drank sangria and talked about the weekend.

as i walked home, i remembered that just a week ago, i was in such pain that i didn’t know how much longer i could keep my head above water. i was losing my strength—both physical and emotional— in a way that scared me.

but the past seven days have been the answer to a prayer i don’t remember asking for.

they—you—have brought me back.

as i blew out my candles on saturday night, i looked around, my face flushed with happiness. i realized that this year, for the first time, i forgot to wish for anything. i forgot to ask to be better. i forgot to wish for the ease i so often covet .

i am twenty four years old now and i am still learning to cope, how to stop wishing to be healthy and normal and fine. if i have to be sick forever but have this life, then that is okay. every healthy minute is remembered, bookmarked and stuck in my pocket. every sick one is made better by knowing what surrounds me.

i am loved and i love.

i do not need to ask for more than that.

i have what i need here.

warmth.

comfort.

love.

peace.

Upload new pic? YES, PLEASE.

Prologue:

This is a post about how I spend way too much time stalking people online (and sometimes in real life) and how I have to write 500 words about the different kinds of pictures people use as their Facebook defaults so that I can kill time between fits of puking at 3 am.

1) "The Looking Hot Pic": This particular type of picture is for when you want your friends/coworkers/exes to see how smokin' hot you look nowadays. This is the kind of picture where, upon first glance, you are like DAYUM, NEW FACEBOOK PIC, NO DOUBT. This is the kind of picture that you pray for every time you hear that click of the shutter. This the hope, the dream, the reason you race over to your friend, grab the digital camera out of their hands and look at the little LCD screen. BOOM, new profile pic, YES.


2) "The Athletic Pic": Almost every Facebook user (i.e. me) spends an inordinate time on the site, looking at pictures of their friend's ugly baby and their ex boyfriend's new gf. We spend hours a day on the Internet, stalking and talking and g chatting until our eyes ache from the computer screen. We rarely admit to this though and that is why this type of profile picture is so handy. This picture, whether we are skiing, playing company softball or Ultimate Frisbee, shows that sometimes we go outside and exercise. That we do more than surf the Internet and watch Christian the Lion. That we exist outside the Internet. This pic says see you on the green, motherfucker. I'll be the one with the Frisbee.



3) "The I Like To Travel Pic": Have you been to Acapulco? Switzerland? Bombay? Well I haven't, but I've been to St. Maarten, LA, Paris, London, Colorado and Other Places recently and you can tell by clicking through my profile pictures. It's all there baby, all you need to know--I travel, I'm smart, I CARRY ON BAGS, and I can even say hi in French. Oui, oui, mo-fo.

4) "The I'm Kooky and You Love Me Pic": So you've established that you're good-looking, atheltic and a world traveler. Now it's time to show your friends how lovable and adorable you are. This is what the "kooky" pic is for. Have you kissed a statue? Made out with a bottle of Cool Whip? Danced with a mannequin? Well make sure you get that shit on JPEG, because you are going to want a kooky pic sometime in your facebook career. Kooky pics say "I'm fun and not crippled by depression!" They say "Hey, look guys! I'm off the Lexapro!" They urge your friends to remember how fun you are, or how fun you used to be. This pic screams: "I was alive once!"

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Epilogue:

Ha, funny story. I was going to write about how people always have stupid pictures of their cute/ugly kids and husbands and boyfriends and then I looked through my Facebook pictures for my own examples and realized I had none of those things and probably never would. And then I got hit with a crippling depression and took a Xanax.

The End.