Black

I woke up and knew that something was wrong. It didn’t take long to figure out what. There was vomit all over the pillow next to my face.


I tried to think and tried to remember but it was black.

I was still in the dress that I went out in. My hair was in disarray. My make-up was all over my face. But none of that was particularly concerning me, what was concerning me was that I had absolutely no idea how I’d got there. It was black.

I was at my Dad’s house because I was dog-sitting. I was totally alone. I wandered through the house looking for clues but everything was eerily tidy. No mess anywhere. My shoes and coat were by the front door, my purse, with all its contents in, was on the kitchen table. My phone and the house key were on the table by the phone. I went back upstairs and there was a glass of water and a bucket by my bed. Everything looked normal but I knew that it wasn’t because my mind was black.

I rang a friend. “What happened to me last night?” “What are you talking about?” “I don’t remember what happened to me last night. I’ve woken up and I can’t remember anything.” “Are you joking?” “Does this sound like the voice of someone who’s joking?” “I left before you but you were fine, you were drunk but you were fine.”

Cue frantic texts to people to ask them if they knew how I’d got home.

I was shaking violently and uncontrollably. I knew that nothing completely horrendous had happened to me. Someone had got me home but I had absolutely no idea who that someone was. I got in the shower in an attempt to clear my head but everything remained black.

A knock on the door revealed everything to me – a male colleague was standing on the doorstep looking incredibly worried. “Did you bring me home last night?” I asked him. He nodded, he’d come back to check on me because he was so worried, he hadn’t wanted to leave me but didn’t know what else to do so had put me in the recovery position and hoped for the best. “What happened?” I asked him, “You were just incredibly drunk,” was all he could tell me.

I spent the rest of the day lying on the sofa, shaking and trying desperately to penetrate the blackness but it’s become clear that the blackness is there to remain. I’m never going to regain my memory of what happened. I can remember being at the party, I can remember talking to people and dancing, but then it’s just black. No memory of collecting my coat and going for the taxi and no memory at all of what happened once I got home.

It’s terrifying. It’s horrible. It’s scary. It’s something I never want to experience again.

People have been kind to me and have offered me a million and one excuses as to how or why it happened;

“You haven’t really drunk in 6 months”
“You’re half the size you used to be, you can’t handle that much anymore”
“You didn’t eat any dinner”
“You were drinking wine, you should have been drinking spirits”

But really they’re being too nice. The simple fact is I drank too much. Way too much. All those excuse are contributing factors as to why I was affected so badly but there aren’t any decent excuses. I’m 27 years old, I should know that I can’t drink over 2 bottles of wine (I remember counting to 5 or 6 glasses) without there being some serious consequences, whether or not I've eaten dinner or I haven't drunk in a while or am thinner than I used to be.

What I still can’t work out though is how I did it. How did I let myself be so incredibly stupid?

I don’t have any answers to that. I think I just got so over-excited about seeing everyone and being out that I just wasn’t concentrating. It’s a lame excuse I know but it’s true. I didn’t intend to go out and get drunk, it was just an unfortunate accident.

I don’t need lectures. Trust me I don’t need to be told how incredibly foolish and dangerous my actions were. I don’t need to be told how lucky I was and how much worse it could have been. Believe me I feel bad about it. I sat for a weekend and cried and cried and cried about what I did and dreaded coming into work in the morning to see people and not have a clue what happened.

That’s the worst – not knowing what other people know. Someone saw me today in the kitchen at work and said “Wasn’t Friday amazing?!” and I had to be honest and say I didn’t really remember. I do know that I was most definitely having a good time, I just can’t really remember the specifics. Lucky for me I held it together at the party – people knew I was drunk but not quite how bad, apparently I was just your average, fun, drunken, life and soul of the party, person, not a complete mess. That’s one thing I can be thankful for.

I know that I seriously owe my life to the person that helped me get home, stayed with me in the house and put me to bed. It doesn’t bear thinking about what could have happened and I’ve run out of ways to apologise to him and thank him for what he did. In the end there is no way of conveying how grateful you are to someone for those kinds of actions, some chocolates and a card were the best I could do.

I wasn’t sure whether to post this story or not. It’s most certainly not an image of me that I particularly want to portray but it is real and it did happen and to pretend that it didn’t would be to lie and I don’t want to be that person. This blog is supposed to be Just Me and I guess this is just me, warts and all.

(The dress looked bloody amazing though.)