Church on Sundays

PhruityPheebles
Nov 15, 2020
5 min read

Updated: Sep 8, 2023

Recommended for people 21+

Content & Trigger Warning: Language & Profanity; Drug or alcohol use; Drug or alcohol abuse; addiction; toxic friendships, risky safety situations

A picture of an old coworker's patio chair that sits on their always-ready-for-parties-balcony overlooking a pond with multi-colored lights on the fence.

I was a late-bloomer when it came to actually having fun while partying in college.

I had tried to party with the "friends" and acquaintances in my dorm or in the sorority I was briefly in, but it was never quite right. For one thing, I would usually get left by myself, drunk and alone, whenever I went partying with these people. They did not give a flying banana about my safety; no one asked me to text them if or when I would make it home safe. No one had cared, so eventually, I started to decline the invitations.

I knew what would happen, and I had only three options:

Option A:

Get ready to go out just to get ignored and talked over by the "Pick-Me" dolled up to the nines trying way too hard to impress the worst fraternity douches or whatever gross dude in a football jersey that would give them an ounce of his drunken attention.

Option B:

Get ready to go out to witness one of my dorm-mates achieve new records of Blacked-out Drunk Freshman and then have to end my night to care for a vomiting toddler instead.

Option C:

et so fucking drunk and get pissed and annoyed at the above two options while uber-ing from one bar or frat house to another every 30 minutes… then eventually leave early to order pizza or wings and continue watching TV on my laptop in bed as I'd originally planned but now more tired and annoyed.

Party hopping and bar hopping is sometimes stupid; I'm not sorry. You don't need to chase a vibe every 30 minutes. You become the vibe. The party is in your heart, not at the next thing. Now don't get me wrong, I love to party. Under the right conditions, I'm a goddamn party monsta- I don't hate socializing. I also do enjoy getting fucked up, but like with any substance, doing drugs or drinking with people you don't like ruins the experience. Of course, that's just my opinion, but in my experience, our walls come down when we are messed up. The kind of company we keep might bring out the best or the worst of us.

Up until at least halfway through college, I had been too busy trying to have a romanticized version of the four-year American University Experience, whatever that means. But eventually I no longer recognized myself in the life I was living since I was too busy trying to live someone else's life. The saddest part was that I had convinced myself that since I didn't have fun binge drinking every night at some scuzzy bar, this meant I must not be a fun person. I especially absorbed this concept when I felt lonely because I was depressed or depressed because I felt lonely. So all mixed together and I no longer felt like a fun person.

I was a very extroverted child, but I became a more introverted teen. Then, finally, I went full antisocial in college. Becoming antisocial was a trauma response for me; it was how I survived and protected myself. I had continuously felt ignored, used, invisible, and misunderstood for so long that I had convinced myself that I hated people. But I know that's not the case. I mean, I do hate people, but in like a general sense. I hated the people I hung out with, so I stopped. I just cut myself out, removed and extracted myself from their circle. I did this a few times in high school and did it a few more times in college.

Sometimes I can't help but think that maybe, just MAYBE, if I had a decent, non-toxic friend group in childhood or high school, I wouldn't have been so depressed. Maybe I wouldn't have struggled to make friends and keep friends in college. I had never felt physically, emotionally, or mentally SAFE with the people I was partying with, so how could I relax and enjoy myself? It wasn't until two or three years into college that I would find a group of friends I felt safe enough to hang out with, mainly because it was the first time I felt safe (as a woman) and as a human person with lots of anxiety. This was the first time in my life that I had fun drinkin' and druggin'.

For one, if I was too drunk, these friends would always let me crash on their couch since it was safer than getting an uber at 4 am or being a drunk driver. After knowing them for a while, they made sure I would get to work on time the next day. We were all work friends, meaning we had the same part-time job. After working long shifts with nasty customers and weird coworkers, a group of us would head straight to the same coworkers' apartment because of its large balcony that overlooked a big pond. It was perfect for puff n' pass circles after multiple shots in the kitchen.

After long weekend shifts and back-to-back weekday shifts, we would meet up and immediately start downing rum shots and rolling joints and blunts. To this day, the smell of fruity rum still makes me nauseous. As I rolled off their couch and they rolled out of their beds, we would sometimes go to iHop and get some greasy breakfast food if we got scheduled to work later in the day.

If we didn't work the next night sometimes, we would go to the popular campus bar downtown, which was thankfully right near my apartment. They would run a $1 beer and $1 burger special every Sunday, so we called it "Church." Coincidentally we went on many Sundays, after a long weekend of working and boozing, we would take our hungover asses and, if God allowed, somehow drink more beer...?!

They would, I would switch back to the water because beer is gross. My stomach and liver would beat me to a pulp if I drank more alcohol while nursing a hangover. So I opted for just the $1 burger instead. And God did not allow that burger to go down easy, especially on a hungover stomach. But that's what you get when you buy a burger for a dollar at a greasy, sleazy, college bar after a night of back-to-back rum shots.

Ahhh, good old-fashioned college fun.

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