What My Mother Never Knew #13: Denial

There were many times when I wondered what I was doing. But I never wanted out - I just wanted to downplay the nasty parts.

Friends would say "I'm going out to get shit-faced tonight" and I'd wonder how they could be so OK like it was something to be proud of. I knew I was going out to do the same thing but I wouldn't want to SAY it out loud. I knew there was something wrong with mood-altering as a form of entertainment. Just like I knew that there was something wrong with staring into the floodlights at the hospital grounds and then tripping around in a "purple-city" for the next half hour. Or that asphyxiating yourself with a towel, keeling over and grinding your chin on the pavement in convulsions was stupid. I knew but I pretended it was all OK.

I know on some level, it was normal to experiment. The thing was though, we didn't care about anything else. I went from being an honours student to C's in the course of a year. I got drunk to the point of blackout and vomiting every time I drank. I often came to school high even thought it left me with a tremendous headache each and every time I smoked it during the day. There are some things that make me smile when I think back though too. One time I even did acid over the lunch hour and absolutely destroyed a piece of woodwork I'd spent hours on. And the trampolines were very very wild - I nearly peed myself laughing.

There were more beach parties, rowdy boys who seemed to enjoy destroying public property and smashing beer bottles on beaches, mushroom picking expeditions, and mini-bar invasions to concoct sickening mixtures of brandies and liquors. We stole my mother's live in boyfriend's -homemade Portuguese wine (not fit for consumption by any standards) and we scrounged through our parents coat pockets to find any stray fives or tens that might help our cause. It was almost as if we had no conscience, but as I've already said, mine was there with me every step of the way, however desperately I tried to fake it out. One incident left me feeling horribly guilty - but I'll save that for next time.