New Years

Thursday January 1

Here we are 2015! 2014 was a rather eventful year for me, so much happened and I really learned a lot about myself and what I want and who I want to be. We are always told to embrace our differences, and I am finally beginning to do just that. Somehow over the course of the year, I became an "anti-conformist." But honestly enough of that boring, mundane shit. Let's talk about last night. Last night got a little too real and it was the first time in a long time that I have felt like the 21-year-old college student that I am. I guess I should start at the beginning.

Since summer I had this grandiose plan for New Years but of course life happened, and those plans fell through. Basically what it boils down to is that I forgot to request off of work, stupid I know. I work at Target and as far as jobs go, it's not difficult at all. I'm in the Electronics department so basically I get to be the geek I was born to be on a daily basis. One of my favorite pastimes is explaining Wi-Fi to the elderly. Veering away from my Target tangent, (check out that alliteration, huh?) the New Years Eve plan was as follows: get a huge group of people together, get a hotel room and split the cost of the room and booze all around. Said room would be in the heart of Downtown Buffalo so it would only be a quick skip and a step to see the ball drop at midnight, then beneath the display of fireworks and among the cheering and screaming I would share my very first New Years kiss with a complete stranger, who would then come back to the room with us and we would talk until sunrise and then go out for coffee, or have sex. In either order. That was the plan. Sounds perfect right?  Instead, I worked until Target closed at 9 p.m. And I went to a friend's house to hang out with her and another friend. The three of us literally hung out as we usually would and it was so average. It wasn't what I hoped for but that doesn't necessarily mean it sucked. I've begun to accept that as I grow older unless you really put the effort into something usually it'll end up boring at some point. 

I decided to play with the cards I was dealt and I still had half a bottle of Bacardi Mango Infusion leftover from Thanksgiving break. It was one of those really large bottles, you know? So with that bottle in hand  I set off to my friend's house totally expecting to return home that night. I should've known better. Once I arrived both of my compadres were just lounging on the couches in the living room. I could tell with a glance that one of them was already trashed. They had drunk a bottle of wine while I was at work. After the initial greetings we decided to start taking shots. First shot went down too easy, so I did another and then we all came to the joint realization that what we thought was vodka in my bottle was actually water. One of my younger siblings, (who still have yet to own up to it) had taken my alcohol and replaced it with water. By this point I had already made up my mind that I didn't want to be sober tonight, so I took to Google to search for places that were open and sold alcohol. That's how I ended up at a gas station and walking out with an 18-pack of beer and a very large "Mang-O-Rita." Back at the house the "trashed girl," got even trashier to the point that we cut her off and as she reached for the still mostly full Mang-O-Rita I stupidly did what I could to stop her from drinking more: I chugged the whole thing. This was what opened Pandora's Box and from there it was past the point of no return. Beer after beer, I could hear myself starting to make less and less sense with every word that left my lips. And then, midnight struck and through the TV and the two girls all you heard was a chorus of "Happy New Years!" and screaming. I simply sat there in silence staring at the phone in my hands waiting for something, anything. Maybe something from my big crush of the semester, I don't know. I couldn't tell you, I think I was just waiting for something out of the ordinary. And when that didn't come, I tossed my phone aside and chugged three beers in rapid succession. Both girls noticed my shift in demeanor and started to ask me what was wrong, and I kept changing the subject because I honestly didn't know. I think it was because I was comparing what happened to what could've been. From this point I was drunk, and it was enough to dodge their questions and to feign happiness. I was so drunk that I didn't even care when both decided to go to sleep and I quickly followed suit because the night was over. And that was it. I drove home this morning in silence, hoping that next year isn't so lackluster and that maybe I will get that New Years kiss either from somebody I actually care deeply for or from that magical stranger that would become my destiny.