Dampening Spirits

Sometime after midnight last night, I stood outside and toasted to the rain. I kissed the air, sticky with broken firework smoke and noisemaker echoes. How thoughtful I feel in these moments, on these annual nights of commiseration. There is no better party than one where my guests can’t count my liquor cabinet trips because they can’t even count their own.

I woke up this morning as I wake up all mornings, dusty-brained and trembling. But, so did everyone else! On New Year’s Day they’re all just as bad as I. Though their shaking is superficial and mine is in frantic, persistent earnest, at the very least I am alongside something, someone, for a moment.

The advent of the new year invades with a shout- or in my case, a whisper. No, not even a whisper. A tap on the shoulder and a breath.

“Hey, hi. It’s me, January. Do you remember the promise you made last night? It was some time after you lost your grip on that champagne bottle on the patio but before you sliced your foot open trying to clean it up.”

I’ve had comprehensive training in light-of-day regret, but remembering this promise I’d made, (to no one? to myself? to God?) was something entirely new. Not regret but dread. Imagine standing atop a building preparing to jump, knowing without a doubt that you cannot fly.

“Yeah, I knew you’d remember. You’ve got a knack for remembering the things least convenient.”

My swollen, aching body kept still while I listened to these sickly sweet mumbles. My foot was throbbing and I slid it around only to feel the stick of dried blood on my sheets and comforter. In my eyeline was a trail of things I was desperate for but couldn’t quite reach. My nightstand, drowning in various glasses of various clear liquids. Beyond that, my bathroom door, ajar enough to see a light left on and a heaping pile of dirty laundry. Beyond that, a shower that screamed out to me, though the nagging voice of January was somehow louder.

“You probably can’t do it but you have to try. You said you’d try. You were so confident when you locked the liquor cabinet and sent Carmen home with the key. Do you remember doing that?”

I did now. The thought was enough to rouse me from rotting position and get me on my feet. My slaughtered, weeping feet. I hobbled into the living room, relieved to find that everyone had gone and I could guiltlessly (well, not entirely guiltlessly,) zero in on that goddamn liquor cabinet. I’d bought one with a lock because I babysat Carmen’s kids from time to time and they were relentlessly curious. I cursed them under my breath and felt no shame about it because the tremors were setting in deep and painfully.

“See? Told you. The fridge is empty too, do you remember insisting that everyone leave with whatever they’d come with? You rattled off so many New Year cliches last night about rebirth and healthy habits that people started to walk in the other direction when you approached, slurring about ‘accountability partnerships.’”

A glance at the clock and some profoundly difficult mental math led me to the conclusion that I was approximately seven hours into “Dry January.” That I was still somewhat drunk was a fact I felt could be overlooked as long as I allowed it to wane.

My house was unusually tidy in its post-party state. I limped around, eyeballing anything that appeared heavy enough to smash a lock off of a moderately expensive cabinet door. In a moment I was scolding myself, and in another moment I was searching the room again. I’d been awake for ten minutes and I was already spinning madly in and out of logic and favor with myself.

“Just drink some water. Order some food. Ride it out. Grant might speak to you again if you can stay sober for longer than a sleep.”

I filled a forty ounce water bottle and carried it to the shower, irony not lost. I gulped and gulped as I waited for the water to get hot, hoping I could sanitize my insides and sear the shame from my outsides. The gash on my foot sobbed when I stepped into the heat but I breathed deep and heavy, watching orange water slither down the drain until it finally ran clear.

In the shower I felt confronted. I could no longer hear January over the rush of the water but I could feel the remorse in my body’s every nerve, though the worst thing I’d done the night before was swear my impending sobriety. I was confronted by years of pent up remorse, the same pins and needles slope I had to climb most days. It felt different in the wake of a decision to face that remorse head on instead of grabbing it by its shitty little neck and drowning it over and over again. I felt terror.

I remained statuesque in the shower until I withered and could stand the heat no longer. I turned off the water and flung the shower curtain aside. I stood in the open air and wept.

Would I ever know real lucidity again? Would I follow through with “dry January” simply by way of death? I felt sure I would succumb in one way or another, but might I at least keep my promise (to no one? to myself? to God?) in the process?

I dried off and laid naked in my bed, listening to January coo and whine at me, as another hour passed.

“Nine hours! Look at you go! Are you sure you don’t want a drink?”

The lines were rapidly blurring, whose side was January on, anyway?

It occurred to me I could sleep the month away as a superficial means to an end. Nothing real or lasting would be accomplished but I could at least feign success that way. I have always had real talent in avoidance. I dozed for a few hours more.

I awoke in the dark with an arid mouth and finally sober. January seemed to be singing softly from the nape of my neck. A tune that floated straight into my brain and lingered there. In a tone that had shifted greatly, suddenly being honest and clear.

“I’m tired of watching you suffer, it’s pitiful. Twelve hours is enough to say you gave it your all. No one expects any more of you. Try again next year.”