Party girl grief...

Did I drink normally... or destructively? Part one of my exploration.

I was all set. Ready for my life to begin. I’d just completed a year of traveling, where I’d mostly kissed boys but not slept with them… for fear of being labelled a slut. That was going to change in university. I was going to shed layers of insecurity (along with my clothes), become someone who knew how to dance to drum n bass and hone a style that was unique, mustily vintage but also (and this was key) sexy. Oh and at some point I’d learn some stuff too. Read books on grassy lawns, write prose in leather-bound notebooks… I just had to get through summer. Get past the hurdle of working alongside the boy I fancied (and who had rejected me months previously) and then I’d be off to university – where I’d become the person I was always meant to be.

Then, just a few weeks into that summer, I was in a taxi. Watching golden cider bubbling in tourists’ hands. Nodding and smiling at the driver, trying not to think about what my dad said during that phone-call. What counts as ‘urgent, come now?’ I thought, as we left behind the Royal Mile with its stilt-walkers and fire breathers, and entered into the quiet, bungalow lined streets leading to the hospital.

If you’ve read any of my last newsletters you’ll know what comes next. My mum was diagnosed with a brain tumour, given days to live. Days that turned into months. I did not go to university. Instead I got a job in Boots The Chemist, where each day I’d follow a set routine of stocking up sandwiches, pulling forward shower gels and turning my eyes the other way when mums hid baby powder and nappies in the bottom of their prams. I distracted myself by listening to Maroon 5 on repeat, imagining She Will Be Loved was about me, and that boy I once liked. Sometimes I’d call him, and cry down the phone.

Meanwhile, my friends were at university, calling me from sticky dancefloors, holding their phones to the speaker, Chesney Hawkes blasting out. “It’s our song,” they’d shout and I’d try to imagine myself in their shoes, looking at the Grease poster of my teenage bedroom, feeling as though Sandy and Danny were sniggering at me. “What a sad life.” And it was. And not just because my mum was dying in the bedroom above mine. I could feel all of my life’s promise drifting away.

My mum, as expected, deteriorated. And, as she did so, my life got better. Not because I’m a monster, or because I secretly hated her (god, no, I can’t even type that. I loved her. I love her) but because I managed to carve a life out for myself that looked more like my peers. A bar maid from the pub opposite the chemist came in, she was a friend of a friend and recognised my misery. She got me a job in the pub, which was famed for its hot, male bar staff (a genius move on the manager’s part). I also made a new group of friends, through a girl I went to high school with. They were all like me – working in full-time jobs, and not studying. Before them I felt stabs of jealousy hearing about my high school friends, and the new relationships they were forging. I lived in constant fear of being replaced – until I made new, shiny friends of my own. My fears were unfounded, I’m still best friends with my core group from school – but back then the love we held for each other felt fragile, and easily broken. But above all, I needed to feel independent from what was happening to me. I didn’t want to be the girl in a grubby white tabbard, living a life of repetition and dead-behind-the-eyes dull sorrow. I wanted to be 19. I wanted to sparkle.

(the staff at The Tron, the pub that saved me from my boots drudgery)

I moved into the cupboard adjoining the bedroom of one of my new friends (yes, her actual cupboard, it was big enough to hold a single bed, I hung all my clothes off of a ladder propped against the wall). We went out drinking a lot. I slept with men. And, in between all of that, my mum was in and out of hospital, she then slipped into a coma, we turned off her life support, somehow she survived, she moved into a hospice…

My diary from the time is this odd mix of love-hearts (‘oh my god, he actually kissed me’), glued in club ticket stubs (‘got soooo wasted last night, hehe’) and angry, biro scrawls, some so full of fury they’re practically illegible. (‘why the fuck do other people get to live, when she has to die?’)

But when your mum is dying and you’re drinking in the exact same way as everyone else is what’s toxic behavior and what’s normal behavior for your age becomes muddled. Very, very muddled. To the extent that I cannot untangle them, even today. One of my most common habits (or ‘tricks’) was to go to the bar, order five tequila shots, slam them all back – in one go, no salt, no lime – as a way to begin my night. Eventually, the amount of alcohol I consumed would make me cry. Something I rarely did during the day. I never said what I was crying for (although perhaps it was obvious) instead it would be because of a boy, or because I’d lost a shoe (I lost a lot of shoes back then.) Interestingly, although a lot of my friends were taking drugs, I didn’t. The idea of taking a pill that held and created happiness worried me. But consuming a depressant (alcohol) until I choke sobbed myself to sleep? I didn’t recognise those actions as concerning at all.

They clearly were. And I have a lot of regrets from that time, regrets that – still – feel too painful to contemplate or write about. Flashes come to me, of staggering into my childhood home at 3am, barely able to walk but filling up her hot water bottle, making a hot toddy… I’ve written about not being able to fully remember her. Did alcohol wipe my brain of our final moments together? I can’t. I can’t think of that.

Yet, while those regrets may torture me, I’m not sure I would go back and change my behavior. I think I needed to be that party girl, sometimes pain is too hard to bear and we need distraction. And living my life, like the 19-year-old I was, brought me so many slices of happiness during such a bleak time. I can still see my friends, disco ball octagons scattering their skin. I can smell Charlie Red, and be back in my friend’s bedroom, dancing to Sir Duke. I can feel the soft velvet of our cheap sofa, remember the built-in VHS television, hear the cartoon whine of Family Guy. The nine months when my mum was dying were the absolute worst, but also the absolute best, of my life.

What point am I making? I really don’t know. Alcohol and grieving is something deeply complex, individual and yes, very dangerous. I could so easily have slipped into addiction and later, after those heady, heart-breaking days had passed, I wondered if they had, indeed, made me an addict. There were many moments in my twenties when I woke up and Googled for my nearest 12-step meeting. But I’m now 37, and coming out of one of the best summers I’ve had in a long time. One where alcohol definitely played its part, but only in its most joyful iteration. I survived… so perhaps it wasn’t destructive. It was needed.

Please don’t think I’m saying that if you’re currently going through turmoil that you should turn to alcohol, or drugs (or any harmful behaviors) for answers. That’s not what I mean. I’ve shared the story above (which is only a small percentage of my life) because this is something I’m interested in exploring more, I want to speak to experts in the field of alcohol, addiction and grief. I want to see if I can undo the knots between what was ‘normal, coming-of-age’ behavior from me back then, and what was destructive. I want to see if that’s even possible. Or perhaps I’ll learn there’s little point examining the past… What happened, happened… and ultimately, I did turn out OK?

So, for now, I’d just love to know what you think. Have you used (what society deems to be) destructive behaviors to ‘help’ with your grief? Have you got addicted to the ‘good’ stuff (e.g: over exercising?) Is it possible all actions in the immediate aftermath of loss have the potential to turn toxic? Let me know in the comments below. And thank you, as always, for your support.