‘Hey, so I think I’m going to go home,’ I say into the ear of a friend who is dancing clumsily by the bar at which we have spent the last few hours frequenting.
‘You’re WHAT?’ she yells in return, pretending she can’t make out my words, when in reality I suspect her intention is to draw attention to my exit.
‘Ha, yeah. I think I’m going to go,’ I say, a little more sheepishly this time.
‘NAH! Don’t go. Guys, tell her not to go,’ she shouts not in my direction, but in the direction of the others we arrived with.
I’m leaving again.
A crowd of four people begin to circle, looking at me about as intently as tipsy people can, urging me to stay.
‘Already?!’
‘But you’re not even working tomorrow!’
‘I’ll buy you another drink.’
‘Stay, it’ll be fun!’
Their words mash together in a messy but unified plea. Of course you should stay. Where else could you possibly need to be?
They’re right. I don’t have work tomorrow, I imagine they will have fun far into the early hours of the morning and it is, in the grand scheme of nights out, an early hour to leave. Also: I want to be the person who wants to stay. I want to be the person who joins them at a gross hour in a desolate corner of McDonald’s, already reminiscing on the silly things that happened in the hours between our first and last drinks. I would love to sit next to them in those sticky, stale booths and giggle about how one of us tripped on the dance floor, or another spent $150 on Fireball shots, or one more mouthed off when a stranger got a little too close for comfort.
But I’m tired. Physically, yes, but mentally, too. I’m tired and I’m leaving again. I’m no stranger to their late-night pitch to stay out, in the same way I imagine they are no stranger to my early-evening plea to go home.
We are standing in the middle of an overcrowded, chaotic dance floor and I wonder why I don’t just tell them how I’m feeling. I think about it for a moment, and ponder what I would say. Would I tell them that at some point in the last six to twelve months I stopped wanting to spend my Saturday nights drinking and losing track of time as it cycles into the early hours of the morning? Would I explain that alcohol feels more alienating than inviting now I’m in my mid-twenties? That I feel diminished by it rather than inflated by it? That it makes me feel anxious, or that when I am drinking I never feel like I’m being outrageous enough or fun enough or funny enough?
I consider having that conversation and then remember why I don’t tell them: because we’re in our twenties, and our relationships with alcohol are defined by denial. We don’t talk about how or why we consume it, or about why our friendships are often dependent on it. We don’t consider the hold it has over our interactions or our confidence, our weeknights or our weekends. Each new drink is a gateway to socialising, a signifier of being young, carefree and free from inhibition. Basically, drinking is fun, so stop overthinking it, yeah?
And so I half-heartedly agree to ‘just one more’ drink in the effort to prove I’m not boring or uptight or too serious for a good time, as if one more vodka soda can undo an entire mid-twenties identity crisis. I sip on my drink quickly, dance with as much enthusiasm as I can muster given I don’t actually want to be there and call it for the second time. This time, no one circles and no one begs me to stay, because this time, they know it’s not worth their energy.
I bid my goodbyes – a kiss here, a hug there, a promise to be in touch in the morning – and snake my way out of the bar. I’m on the footpath now, my eyes scanning traffic for the Uber driver who says he has arrived. As I walk towards him, I find myself consumed by a familiar concoction of relief and guilt.
I’m leaving again.
I don’t want to be inside the bar, but I do want to want to be inside the bar. It’s a strange sense of failure, really: my mid-twenties aren’t as wild, carefree or defined by as many silly, drunken nights out as I thought they would be as a teenager.
Yes, I think to myself as I sink into a stranger’s back seat, it feels like failure. I can’t shake the feeling my social life isn’t worth anything if it doesn’t look like what it used to. As if I am stuck in social Siberia. And if I’m no longer fulfilled socially in the way all my friends seem to be, what does that mean for our interactions? For our future? For the basis of our friendships?
I rest my head against the back seat and caution myself against spiralling too far. You are allowed to leave in the same way they are allowed to stay.
The guilt, I know, will linger into the morning, far beyond the moment I jump into bed and let myself slip into sleep. I know this because I have been here many times before. I know, too, that I will wake in the morning and go through the motions once again, texting them to touch base about the rest of their night.
How did it end up? What time did you get home? They have sore heads and droopy eyes, they tell me, and wasn’t I smart to go home when I did? They express small shards of self-loathing, knowing they are about to waste one of their only days off lying in bed feeling battered. I know this, because up until a year ago, the sore-headed person receiving that message was me.
‘Is this what your mid-twenties are for?’ they will ask themselves, buried deep in their doona on a Sunday afternoon, wondering if they are wasting their time, energy and years on drunken evenings out. The nausea will settle into their veins, and the guilt will settle into mine, and we’ll all stare into mugs of coffee, convinced we’re doing something wrong, certain that the other is doing it right. If only one of us would speak up, and say what we were actually thinking.