It’s funny how you can choose to forget certain moments. You let the memory fade away until it’s simply gone. I wish I could do that, but unfortunately one night in particular will be a part of me forever. I can’t forget it even if I tried.
Smack, I felt my head collide with my porcelain throne, AKA my toilet. On my hands and knees, I knelt over and emptied out the contents of my stomach. Sweaty hair stuck to my face while my cheetah print velvet dress became all too hot on my plastered form. My body was telling me I had consumed an ungodly amount of alcohol and it was right.
I felt no pain as my head connected with the toilet seat. Instead, I immediately brought it back up as soon as it made contact. I sat upright again, grasping the outer rims of the seat. My world started spinning. My head wanted to agree with the pull of gravity and I let it. Smack, I hit the toilets hard surface twice more before I finally pushed myself away from the now vomit splattered surface.
“How did I let myself get like this?” I thought before I let my world turn black.
My weekend from hell began with a call from my boyfriend, which I ignored. He called as I sat down on an uncomfortable chair, about to bullshit an exam I didn’t feel prepared to take.
My phone buzzed again and the screen illuminated, notifying me of a new text from my boyfriend.
The message read, “Hey I really need to talk to you. It’s important.”
I responded quickly, “What is it?”
My phone rang for the second time. What the hell was so important?
My “boyfriend” I had been dating for three months, and he was the only guy I had ever dated. I put quotation marks around boyfriend because when you date someone aren’t you supposed to go on dates? Yeah…we never did. The only reason he even gets the label is because I told him flat out I wasn’t sleeping with someone I wasn’t dating. Just like that he made it a point to call me his girlfriend. Romantic right?
I started getting pissed. The mixture of test anxiety and his urgency to contact me made me anxious.
Then the most horrible idea popped into my head, “Oh my god, he gave me an STD.”
Now, here I was about to take my exam, and I convinced myself I had AIDs. My hands started sweating. How could I let this happen?
My TA looked at me with concern. He was lanky, bearded and British. Imagine the dad from The Wild Thornberrys, Sir Nigel Archibald.
“Ready for the exam?” he asked while handing me an answer sheet.
My resting bitch face combined with the thoughts racing through my head gave him a pretty clear answer, so he retreated to the front of the classroom.
An hour and 10 minutes later my right hand was throbbing. I’m surprised my pencil didn’t break from the intense pressure I put on it while taking my exam. I shoved my test at Thornberry and rushed out of the classroom.
I found a quiet place on campus. I didn’t want to have a mental breakdown in front of a bunch of unknowing bystanders. This was the moment of truth. I scrolled through my phone, found his name and pressed the call button.
“Hey, look I just want to let you know I really like you,” he said before I could say a word.
In this moment, I wasn’t feeling nice so I said coldly, “What’s so important?”
He paused on the other line. The tension killed me.
“I kissed another girl while I was at the bar last night, I’m so sorry. You aren’t going to break up with me are you?” he said exasperated.
The logical reaction from most girls would be to cry or yell, but I burst out laughing. I felt so relieved. I built up the idea that I was diseased to the point that his response sounded wonderful.
When I managed to compose myself, I realized he was crying. I actually made a guy cry.
“Why are you laughing, are you breaking up with me?” he said, sounding like a mess.
“No, sorry. I just think its funny you’re getting so worked up over something so stupid,” I said.
I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He was probably drunk and pecked a girl on the lips. I also thought about how I’d just slept with this guy. I didn’t want my first “relationship” to end so abruptly, so I decided to play the nice card and let it slide.
The following night, I participated in an apartment crawl with a club I joined. I started the crawl with three tequila shots, and his place marked the next stop on the itinerary. Before heading to the next location, he pulled me aside and told me I should be more pissed at him.
As the crawl progressed, so did my anger. I finally texted him, “She wasn’t just some girl, was she?”
“No, I’ve had past feelings for her.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“Yes.”
All of my emotions hit me at once. I let the alcohol consume me.
I woke up at 5:30 a.m. starving and dying of thirst. Somehow I managed to make it to my bed before the night ended.
I made myself a bagel and bit into it. My mouth throbbed, my front tooth in particular. When I looked in the mirror, my whole face was bruised and my front tooth looked a different shade from the rest of my teeth.
In my drunken stupor, I damaged my front tooth so bad, it internally bled. This resulted in multiple trips to the oral surgeon during my already too-short spring break. $3,000 dollars later I ended up with a dead tooth and severely peeved parents. I ended up getting a root canal and an internally bleached tooth.
I’d love to hit a rewind button on my life, but I can’t. Eventually, I accepted my flaws because you can’t go through life dwelling on the past. I focus on the here and now and how I can ultimately make myself a better person for the future. I just hope the next time I’m in an oral surgeon’s office, I’m 90 years-old about to get dentures.
