2017

Ryan caught me cheating on him. We were never technically exclusive, but I didn’t deny it when he called me his girlfriend or anything like that. I couldn’t get into The Woods and the cab driver didn’t know my address so I slurred 100 Rogers Ave and woke up knowing I did something wrong. Ryan had dragged me out of the cab and I threw up somewhere in his apartment and he went through my phone to text Carolina and saw the incriminating evidence. I hadn’t wanted him to be my boyfriend until he saw those messages. I was desperate to fix it. I showed up at his apartment drunk, again, a week later after going to my work holiday party and unsuccessfully hitting on my crush, nicknamed “Primo.” Primo had one Lorde song on a Spotify playlist so I decided I was obsessed with him. I was now obsessed with Ryan, after months of keeping him at arm’s length. He was still mad at me, but he agreed to come to lunch with my parents before I went to Europe for Christmas break.

My parents come in on a hazy winter day. Tomorrow I’ll be on a flight to London, away from my mess in New York. We go to The Four Horsemen and see James Murphy and my mom posts something on Instagram about it. I rolled my eyes because she didn’t even care about LCD Soundsystem until recently, unlike me, who worshipped them in college. OK, I only started listening to them in 2010, but for the next few years I would put on “All My Friends” every single time I was blacked out. One time everyone was dancing to “Shout” and at the a little bit louder now… part I changed the song and everyone was in hysterics. I don’t remember that moment at all. We go to Emmy Squared for pizza, Ryan and Jamie show up separately and Jamie’s nose starts bleeding because he’s so hungover. For once I’m not the sibling who’s hungover at a family event. I get the impression that my mom is flirting with Ryan. He had bleached hair then, I think she thinks he’s cute. We part ways and I can tell I’m getting back in his good graces.

The next morning I’m at JFK, drinking Prosecco at the airport. Instagram tells me Countess Luann got arrested the night before for disorderly conduct. I take Xanax and drink more wine on the flight and have an incredible, fuzzy time my whole way there, just in time for Christmas.

2025

I keep referring to this as my “first big trip.” I haven’t really gone anywhere recreationally since Tommy and I went to Portugal a year earlier. That trip hadn’t been good, and for some reason my residential therapist would always bring this up as a reason to conquer my eating disorder. You didn’t even get to enjoy Portugal!!!!, she told me again and again. We were going to Asheville then the mountains for Ellen’s wedding. I wanted to go to the Biltmore, and when we finally made it there, I declared that I needed to eat before we went to the estate. We had 20 minutes until our reserved entrance time and went to a sandwich counter with a line 20-deep of the oldest women you’ve ever seen. I had to laugh! I got a hot dog and hush puppies and ate them in the car.

I have a vision of my wedding look in my head. Brown tartan (rented) Isabel Marant dress, big blown out hair, vintage patchwork suede boots. I even got GelX nails for the first time and everything. I try on my outfit for Olivia the night before I leave, and I can’t zip my boots up. I guess it makes sense my calves would get bigger along with the rest of my body but I think, REALLY??. When I’m getting ready for the wedding my vision begins to crumble. I have to look at my body, my face, my hair way too much. All I see is wrong, wrong, wrong. I try and put on my winged eyeliner and I fuck it up. So many people look better than me at the wedding. Tommy tries to force me to pet an alpaca and I get cross with him. I eat one, two, three candy cigarettes through the ceremony and cry my stupid make up off. The bathroom floods right before I can finally pee. A bunch of LCD Soundsystem plays but I can’t remember all of the words. I try to tell the “Shout” story but no one can hear me.

As soon as I see that we’re sitting in the last row on the plane, I know this is going to be a bad flight. Turbulence starts about thirty minutes in and I try to stay cool until I have to put my face down in Tommy’s lap as if that will do anything. I eat all of the snacks that I have on me to soothe the pain of the total loss of control you have when you’re being flung around in a metal cylinder in the air. I felt sick that night eating a rice bowl from Cava. I’d say the weekend was pretty successful, I tell anyone who asks.

I haven’t been to a meeting in awhile so it’s not a surprise that I’m thinking about how nice a big glass of wine would be. But then I listen to my favorite podcast and the sober co-host talks about being a psycho on flights while fucked up on Xanax and alcohol. Oh yeah, I remember, I’m an alcoholic. I remember coming home from that trip to Europe and having a panic attack on the way to the subway. I looked awful when I bumped into Primo on the way into work that day. He probably didn’t even notice.