A Story About Mid-Week Hangovers

One for all the 365 Party Girls

After a few false starts and stints of beautiful September sunshine, it seems we’re properly in Autumn. October is only a few days away, and the rain is hitting the giant tin roof that’s been put on top of our building whilst they replace the actual roof. I can hear the noise of it when I go to sleep, and it’s finally cold enough to comfortably sleep with a duvet, without sweating during the night.

Because time is the only measurement of chronology that we have in this dimension, my body is remembering, like clockwork, all of the autumns that have come before. It’s a gift we are given, year on year: as each day of the calendar passes we are able to see, and unable to escape, the progress (or deterioration) of ourselves since the last version of that day.

I have a complicated relationship with September’s transition from sunshine to rain (an extremely un-shocking statement; apparently I have a complicated relationship with literally every single thing that there’s a word for). Today, on the 26th of September, I am remembering this day two years ago.

I had just moved to London, and was riding the high of newness: a new flat, and some new friends within the flat. One of them was a student, and we used the printer in her university library to print out full-colour pictures of Richard Hammond, which remain blu-tacked to the walls in the flat today.

Before this, I had been living in Manchester, where I first went to university and then stayed on for a couple of extra years, trying to find a career. Most of my university friends were doing similar things, and we all stuck together, eventually all living in the city centre. Some of us had proper jobs, and some (like me) were drifting - but we lived in walking distance of each other, and one constant in our lives was a congregation at the pub every few days. Here, we would smoke eight to nine cigarettes per evening; we would laugh (sometimes I laughed so much that I nearly weed), and then complain about things. 

One of my favourite things about living with friends was how similar our lifestyles were, and how funny it all was. We all had a tendency to drink a bit too much, and on hangover days we would rot together in our own filth, sometimes running to the shop in the early afternoon to get some hair-of-the-dog ciders whilst someone put on The Incredibles.

Towards the tail end of those five years, though, I had noticed the amount of hangover days we had together was dwindling a little bit. Maybe they had split off into couples that did things like "Sunday walks to the fresh food market", which did not require a third person - or maybe I was having more hangover days than the rest of them (unlikely, I thought; and, if true, then only by a tiny micro-fraction).

At this time, I was firmly inside the 'sober-curious' label. Quite sensible, I thought - so many people around me seemed to be letting the drinks flow with reckless abandon, without even thinking about stopping. Not me, though - I had given up drinking for five months the year before, and was committed to both Dry January and Sober October each year, just to keep my drinking levels moderate. 

When all my friends started moving down to London, I did the same, and now I was here, after months of looking for a room. I was filled with glee at the prospect of starting anew, in London - the Big Apple, home of fairy-lit pub gardens and a generally classy vibe. My new flatmate got us free drinks at the pub where she worked, and had allegedly once served one of the actors from Bridgerton. Bridgerton! I knew I had a good feeling about moving here.

All three of us were tall and blonde-ish, and we had triple the amount of clothes because we could all share each other’s. I posted mirror selfies on my Instagram story in tiny dresses and big boots, and there were brief moments were I felt like I’d Made It. I thought, and still think, that these girls were two of the funniest I had ever met, and we laughed a lot when we lived together. 

One example of such laughter was a morning in late September: I was nursing a slight hangover from some drinks with the girls, which had accidentally morphed into the early hours of the morning.

We had ended up getting kicked out of the pub we were in when one of my flatmates - who we all agreed had got a tiny bit carried away - dropped a full pint glass on someone else’s table. I remember the boy she was seeing at the time refused to walk her home because it was “too far”, and I made her realising her worth and dumping him my mission, like one of those gap-yah kids who goes to build schools in Uganda.

I woke up to the sounds of a man from the council running a massive leaf-blowing machine outside my window. Once I realised that it was Sunday morning, I started assembling an internal committee of rage against the leaf-blower inside my mind - but, unfortunately, I hadn’t eaten in nearly sixteen hours, and all the voices inside my head were too hungry to get the committee off the ground. 

I decided to go on a walk to get a coffee and explore the new area, thus keeping my mind active, and preventing it from falling into the famous bottomless pit of despair. I found myself walking through a small park, and thought I’d call the boy I’d been seeing for the last few months, to update him on the new flat. 

We had met in Bristol, where I'd spent the last few months sofa-surfing and looking for somewhere to live, and had agreed to do long-distance when I moved. We shared a mutual love of trees - him in a studious, carbon-capturing way, me in a more hippie-ish, meditative way. “There are so many trees here,” I said, “and I can even see one from my window!” 

The year before, living in a city centre, I had had to walk for around fifteen minutes to get to a tree - and I certainly couldn’t see any from my window, which I thought might have had something to do with the problem. 

I continued yapping for around fifteen minutes, explaining the trees and the people I was seeing as I walking through the leafy park. Once I had tired myself out I asked him how he was doing, forgetting I hadn’t done so yet. “I’m doing fine,” he said, “yeah. I went on a bike ride yesterday, and that was nice. Fourteen miles.” I tried to think of a hilariously perfect response - possibly involving some kind of witty quip about bikes or miles.

“Listen, I do need to say something, though”, he said. I started sensing danger, but tried to bat it out of the way. “I no longer want to continue dating long-distance.”

There it was: he had done it, and now the danger was real. Immediately, my heart felt like it had been ripped out backwards through my spine. (A few months after this, when I saw him next, I asked him why he let me talk for so long before breaking up with me. “I just liked listening to you,” he said. “I always liked listening to you.”)

“Oh, right!”, I said, my voice raising about six octaves without my permission. “That’s fine. That’s so fine!” I was met with silence from the other end of the phone.

“That’s great, actually,” I continued. “Listen, I have to go now, actually, sorry. I’ll speak to you soon - or, probably not, I guess, Ha Ha!”. I hung up the phone before he had a chance to respond and kept walking, not looking where I was going; my body hungry and hungover, and my soul having taken a serious hit.

A break-up. This was not going to be good for my rage: I knew that for certain. I’d not even been in London for a month, and already there was yet another strike on the L tally. 

I saw my life as a debt sheet. I needed, more than ever, to stay in the black, not falling down into the red, otherwise I didn't know what I might do - die, possibly. I wish I was joking. 

Moving flat was a win, and the breakup was a loss, which meant I was breaking even. It was way too close to the red for my liking, and I knew, walking numbly through the park, that I needed to work on getting myself back up, so I didn’t accidentally get struck down again.

Fuck, this was annoying. I thought I was finally free of constantly feeling like I was treading water - if not forever, then at least for a few months. That’s all I’d wanted: to enjoy my life.

I found an empty bench on the pavement, having finally escaped the park and all its cursed trees, and thumped down onto it. This was bullshit.

Also, as a side-note, why had every break-up I’d had over the last year happened when I was brutally hungover?

It’s because I keep dating men with 9-5s, I thought to myself. Fucking squares. They probably pencil in breaking up with me as one of their Sunday morning activities, right after “pump up bike tyre” and “book doctor’s appointment.” That’s clearly what the problem is, here: I need to start dating perpetually unemployed musicians again.

Suddenly, two figures entered my field of vision and started waving; it was my flatmate, Kat, and her boyfriend, who were out on a similar hungover coffee walk to my own.

“Guys!”, I said, my voice giddy with relief, “I am so happy to see you. The worst thing has just happened to me.” They laughed and I joined them, explaining the last thirty minutes.

They took me down some twisty back-roads behind the park to get to what was allegedly the best bakery in the area, where we sat down, and they indulged and consoled me. I felt like a child who gets a lollipop from the pharmacy after a scary doctor’s appointment. We kept walking, arriving at a second-hand bookshop where the two of them said they wanted to browse.

“Oh god,” I said, and stopped in the middle of the pavement. “He loved books.” My face went through the preliminary motions of starting a big, ugly cry.

“Right, come on,” said Kat sternly. “Let’s not be silly, now.” And then, instead of crying, I laughed. The two of us kept laughing there on the street, long after Sam had gone into the shop.

After we left the bookshop we headed to the pub, where some friends were assembled to make the most of the September sunshine. I got a Bloody Mary, for Sunday classiness, and as I was drinking it I explained my plan.

I simply needed to self-actualise, I said, to get back into a winning state of mind. Maybe I’d start listening to podcasts, or something: either way, I knew what I needed to do was coat myself in layers of confidence, ramp up the self-assurance and become the hottest version of myself that could possibly exist. I began formulating this plot in my head, which involved first getting some new highlights, and then getting up early every morning to meditate.

We all joked about having got a bit ‘too silly’ the night before, agreeing that it wouldn’t happen again for a while, and then ordered another round of drinks. It was the perfect way to spend a Sunday, I thought, and I definitely didn’t want it to end.

After everyone had finished their second drinks, though, they gently dispersed, citing things like seeing family, or going to work, or doing laundry. I felt profoundly betrayed - a loss on the tally, to be sure. Luckily, I had a friend who I knew would help me continue this dreamy day, and he hauled over to my end of London. We sat in a pub garden, feeling the day rapidly dwindle but keeping ourselves afloat with three or four pints. At 7pm, finally, I conceded that I was tired - maybe because of the early start - and went back to my flat, falling asleep early and blearily content.

At 3am the next morning, the five pints from the pub woke me up. After a few blissful seconds of oblivion, my mind caught up with my body, and started hurling thoughts at me. I am lost; I am scared; I am extremely unsure if I have any grasp left on who I actually am.

These were not the thoughts I wanted. I would have much preferred something light-hearted and fun; I was supposed to be a silly billy, after all. Quick, Iona, think silly thoughts. I tried to snatch the humour out of the situation, but a winged stork of the night snatched it away before I could take hold of it.

What was happening? I thought London was supposed to be where everyone cool and fun lived. Where were the people who knew how to have a good time, the ones I'd seen on Instagram? Were they all just going to some different, secret pub that I didn't know about? 

Was I being excluded; was this exactly like when I was twelve years old? Was I still not good enough, still, despite spending the last decade throwing myself relentlessly at the pursuit of self-development?

We are uniquely defenseless at 3am. Those thoughts which I would usually silence with an 'oh well, let's just go to the pub and wait for all this to blow over' - or, in a pinch, 'let's have a Lion bar / cigarette / natter with a friend and wait for all this to blow over’ - were left to flourish amongst the full-body headache that was making itself apparent. I knew I couldn’t get out of bed; my limbs wouldn’t move, even if I willed them to with all my might.

And so, it continued: everything I was thinking and feeling catapulted around its cage, for hours, whilst I lay there trying to control it. Logically, I knew that I needed to surrender to the flow of thoughts - I wasn’t stupid. I’d read that book by Eckhart Tolle (or, at least, I’d said I’d read it so many times that I became slightly convinced I actually had). I stayed stuck to the thoughts, though, convinced that if I just manoeuvred them in the right way, I could get my life back under control, there, in bed, at 5am.

It seemed infinite, and despite only recently being in the black on the debt-sheet, I was unsure if I had ever felt worse.

That was two years ago, and these days I am sleeping well. I don’t do drugs or drink anymore, and I’m still in the same flat; I still walk through the same park, most days. Today, I am not afraid that the trees might remind me of that boy - in fact, obviously, I love them even more than I did before. My life has been infected with peace. 

I am still the same person, and I still get frustrated when I hear the man with the leaf-blower outside my window (why on a weekend? Why? Is this life not cursed enough?) These days, though, it’s just things like that - like noisy leaf-blowers, or the hiccups, or a bad day at work, or any other number of normal human things that everyone goes through - that carry the power to upset me. I am no longer plagued by the unthinkable threat of the void, and my body, my mind and my soul are grateful for this every day.

If you are struggling with drinking, drugs or The Void, feel free to message me on Instagram @ionaiskewl if you want some help. This post is paid for now, but I might make it free later down the line so it can reach more people who might need it.