20nothing.com

No day in my life will ever be as bad as November 25, 2001. Global nuclear war, the birth of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt or the invention of Crocs have nothing on this one particular day when a lone seventeen year old girl (me!) drank three quarters of a bottle of tequila, woke up in the back of a police car covered in vomit and then spent twelve hours on a couch.
“Don’t turn the fan on;”
“Talk only at a whisper;”
“Turn that fucking television off,” were the only phrases I said in between near-silent murmurs about the possibility that I needed to be taken to the emergency room. My brain, which was about eight paces behind my body, could not handle any movement, sudden or otherwise, and I genuinely thought I was going to die. If only I knew at the time that the fourth tequila shot was the decider, things may have turned out differently. Instead, I killed my liver on my first ever drinking binge and set an interesting precedent. To this day, I cannot drink tequila [unless I am already sufficiently hammered] or use alcohol-based suncream.

The past decade can be summed up, for me, as Rinse And Repeat. I did it with my hair, my relationships and my hangovers. It is ironic, really, considering The Noughties was also my most educational decade where everything from my hair color to my perception enjoyed significant make-overs. It was poetic, if nothing else, to end it while lying on my self-imposed death bed after inventing a new diet that simply involves all of the Jack Daniels in SoCal and then throwing up everything ever ingested. Rinse And Repeat.

Because I apparently did not get the memo that December 31 is New Years Eve, I went hard on December 30. As I laid in bed, for sixteen hours, on the last day of this centuries first decade, hypothesizing what would be the least strenuous but most effective way to kill myself, I tried really hard to think if I had learned anything from November 25, 2001 to the present. This day came a close second to the one nine years prior, a valid reason to actually use my United States health insurance, but the only conclusion of evolution I [could manage to think of] was that my seventeen year old self dragged herself out of bed at eight o’clock and did it all over again. The twenty-five year old version, however, sat in a bar, sober, on New Years Eve and died of boredom.

Hangovers are the greatest physicalization of human beings repeatedly doing stupid things to themselves. Actively making choices, really, to make ourselves sick. It is like if cancer was an option on the McDonalds Dollar Menu and we actually ordered it. The obviousness of the irrational choice is expelled through our pores because our body reacts to it. But we make repetitive mental and emotional choices that are just as toxic just, usually, undetectable to the naked eye. I have yet to find myself in the fetal position on the bathroom floor, shaking with dehydration, because I mixed whites with colors when doing laundry. For example.

The Naughties – sorry, Noughties – show, upon reflection, a rinse and repeat of emotional decisions to the point where I can no longer ask, “Why?” My active, and somewhat drunken, choices have all had a very similar premise and, because of chain reaction, have had similar outcomes. Five out of the six people I have ever had feelings for in my entire life have reunited with their ex-girlfriends after being with me. For example. Like I am the momentary intellectual beard or unquestioning floozy who makes Them realize how much better they had it Before. The first time it happened, I laid in the fetal position on the bathroom floor, shaking with depression, because I was rejected for a girl I would never want to be friends with, let alone share a common interest with a boy. The second time it happened I had a deja vu, but instead of spending an extended amount of time in the bathroom, just declared the situation to be shit. The third and fourth times expelled very little emotion out of me, because, well, it was like watching Dawson’s Creek on repeat and it just wasn’t that interesting in the first season. But the fifth time, and the final time to poetically round out a decade, I started to ask, “Why?” and focus on Me instead of Him.

Once one understands that human beings are free to make any choice they desire, so long as they are willing to take responsibility for the consequences, life starts to make a lot more sense. While laying on the bathroom floor on the last day of the decade, I thought about the choices I had made and realized that the outcomes of them were completely, one hundred percent, my responsibility. It was no one else’s fault as to why I was more hungover than Hemmingway ever was or why I am the physical reminder of how much They love someone else. Because I actively make decisions to put myself in those situations. I take chances on already explored paths and, really, cannot be shocked that I arrive at the same destination. Getting angry at someone else for such a result is redundant. Getting angry at myself, however, might cause me to make different decisions. And explore new things. If only new bathroom floors.

I don’t believe in New Years Resolutions because most people seem to choose things that restrict them.
“I will do less of…;”
“I will stop doing…;”
“I will no longer…,” are the prefixes to a myriad of different vices that are no longer welcome in their pallet of life. In the event that I have promised myself something on December 31, it has always been something that will enhance my life with a positive introduction.
“I will eat more chocolate;”
“I will have more sex;”
“I will start learning my lesson.”
The constructive connotation welcomes a positive attitude, making me want to do it rather than feeling like I am missing out on something. Because, what I have learned between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five is that if you are laying on your bathroom floor in the fetal position at two o’clock in the afternoon, you are missing out on something and that can never make life good.