I’m Special (17 page)

I have thousands of Facebook friends and Twitter followers, so one could safely assume that I'd be drowning in playdates, but the opposite is true. It's easy to tweet at a person, and it's easy to “like” their statuses on Facebook, but it's getting harder and harder to actually show up for someone and actively put effort into building a friendship. I find it hilarious that I'm “friends” with so many people on the Internet when I actually only hang out with five people. That's how it works, though. The more fruitful your virtual life is, the more your real life gets neglected. Sometimes I think about the future of my social life and worry that things are going to get even darker. I see myself at my best friend's wedding getting sad drunk at the singles table while people stare and thank God that the lives they have are fuller than mine. After everybody I love gets married, our friendships will be reduced to phone calls and lunches and “I miss you” and “Remember when?” Then babies will enter the picture and everything will be ruined. The only people who will have time to hang out with me are the elderly at a seafood buffet.

When Clare and other close friends of mine fell down the rabbit hole of a long-term relationship, there was a part of me that felt like I was getting left behind. While I was busy working and sabotaging my love life, they were moving in with their significant others and progressing emotionally in ways that I couldn't even fathom. I wanted to be a part of their life change and they wanted to be a part of mine, but it didn't feel possible. They were in love. They understood things about the world that I didn't, and it had created an undeniable inequity between us.

Clare and I could have stopped being friends like Sarah and I did. The only reason we survived is because we decided to put the work in. After two years of festering resentments, we finally had it out with each other in front of a juice bar in the West Village. We screamed unthinkable things at each other; we took a rusty knife and dug deep into the wounds. Clare sobbed. I sobbed. People drank their juice and were like, “WTF?” By the time it was over, we were like, “Even though I hate you right now, the thought of not being friends makes me hate everything else more.” So we agreed to start from scratch and let go of any past anger. We had to. There are so many people in this world who make you feel like an alien. When you find someone who “gets it,” you don't take it for granted. Great people don't grow on trees.

I've accepted that my friendships will change as we mature, and it's unhealthy to fight it. Being someone's friend once said more about yourself than you could ever say on your own, but then you grew up and stopped feeling like half a person. This doesn't make friendships less valuable now. If anything, they take on more meaning. Now that you've gotten your sea legs and started to become the person you're going to be, you're not looking for validation or to fill a void. You want to be around people because you like them. Shocking, isn't it? Just chalk it up to another life lesson you only learn through extensive trial and error. It's embarrassing that it's taken me this long to figure out how to navigate something as seemingly easy as friendships, but I can't say that I'm surprised. I feel like there are people who get things on the first try and then there are people like me with a slow learning curve who have to fight long and hard for every inch of growth. I've made a lot of progress in my life, but the one lesson that took me the longest to figure out is the one that almost derailed everything.

I couldn't stop the bad things from feeling so damn good.

How Not to Drink or Do Drugs

BEFORE I LEFT FOR
college and embarked on what would be a decade of mistakes, my father sat me down and gave me some typical advice like, “Don't eat soft-serve in the dining hall every day unless you want to gain the freshman fifteen,” and “Be sure to invest in a nice pillow to soften the blow of sleeping on a shitty dorm mattress.” He also told me that if I drank any alcohol, I'd run the risk of becoming more retarded.

Dad:
Ryan, I know college is a time for experimentation and getting drunk, but I really think it's in your best interest to not partake in that stuff.

Me:
Come on, Dad. Everyone is going to be drinking.

Dad:
Need I remind you that you're not like everybody else?

Me:
What do you mean?

Dad:
You have brain damage.

Me:
I know. So what?

Dad:
So what? You don't have the luxury of losing any more brain cells!

Me:
Dad, drinking is not going to give me more brain damage.

Dad:
It might.

Me:
Well, then I don't care. I'm still going to do it!

Dad:
That stubbornness is your brain damage talking.

My father's never had a sip of alcohol in his life. He considers it to be low-class behavior and will turn into an instant Judge Judy if someone drinks in front of him. A few years after that conversation, while I was home from college, my father began interrogating me about my partying. I'd just turned twenty-one and moved to New York City, so I obviously wasn't riding the sober train. The first friend I made at Eugene Lang was this crazy lush, Sadie, who only wore Chanel and lived in a luxury apartment building downtown. Every night I spent with her had the potential to be the Best Night Ever, and it usually was. Sadie just attracted insanity. It scared me a little bit, her manic energy and thirst for a never-ending supply of booze and drugs, but it was also thrilling for someone like me who just moved to the city and wanted to feast on YOLOs. A typical night for us meant drinking a bottle of wine before we left her place to go out and then downing as many margaritas as we could stomach at some epic party. By night's end, I was usually passed out on her floor while the rest of my friends stayed up to call their coke dealers and danced around my lifeless corpse. I couldn't tell my dad about any of these shenanigans, though. He'd have an aneurysm, and I'd be strapped to a gurney and sent off to rehab at Broken Promises. So I lied and told him that I only drank once a week.

Dad:
ONCE A WEEK? Oh. My. God. Ryan, that's veering into alcoholic territory.

Me:
What? No, it's not!

Dad:
It's abnormal. No one is drinking that much.

Me:
Yes, they are. My drinking is fine, Dad!

I was telling the truth. I've been imbibing for ten years, and even though I've had brief periods of heavy drinking, there's never been a problem. My mother is an alcoholic who's been sober for years. I've accompanied countless friends to A.A. meetings for moral support. I know what alcoholism looks like, and it's not me, hon. My father, however, was convinced I was raging too much. After our little chat, he surprised me a week later with some “proof  ” that I was spiraling out of control.

Dad:
Ryan, I've been thinking a lot about what you
claim
to be a normal amount of alcohol for kids your age to consume. As you know, The Dad loves to research . . .

Me:
Oh God. What did you do?

Dad:
Nothing major. I just interviewed a group of kids your age about their alcohol consumption.

Me:
You're lying. That would require a level of crazy I'm almost positive you don't have.

Dad:
I did, and all of the kids I talked to thought getting drunk once a week was excessive.

Me:
DID YOU INTERVIEW MORMONS?

Dad:
No. These kids were normal. Just like you.

Just like me? As if. My father's “data” was bogus and clearly pooled from sexually active LARPers. Still, his meddling into my relationship with alcohol caused me to reflect on my sordid drunk history.

It all started when I was a senior in high school and took a sip of cheap champagne. It reminded me of the Martinelli's I used to have on New Year's Eve with my parents, and I loved it! I guzzled down the entire bottle and got completely white-girl wasted. When you start your love affair with alcohol, your mind always goes to excess. Why settle for drunk when you can black out, puke on someone, and have a great story to tell the next morning at breakfast? The goal is to get out of control and become the talk of the party. “Oh really? You had sex in your best friend's mom's bed and then vomited all over it? Well, once I was so blacked out I peed in a litter box!” That really did happen to one of my friends. She peed in a litter box. I was there. I saw it. It happened. I saw some other weird things, too. Once I watched a girl sob uncontrollably while making out with her boyfriend in the middle of a house party. Everyone pretended not to notice and danced around them, which is pretty darn polite for a group of seventeen-year-olds. Another time I witnessed a cake fight break out at a birthday party, which completely destroyed the tiles of whoever's house it was. Then, taking a page from the movie
Stand By Me
, everyone started puking rainbow-colored pieces of cake. It actually looked kind of pretty.

This all happened during the first phase of drinking, when alcohol still looked like a goddamn beauty queen and hadn't shown us its ugly face yet. We'd get blissfully fucked-up, do something insane, and face zero consequences. In fact, you'd have an army of friends around you supporting your decisions and making sure you're okay.

“Do you need to puke?” one concerned friend would ask. “I'll pull your hair back when you vomit.”

“No, I will!” another friend would interject. “She's my best friend! Let me do it!”

The last time I vomited from drinking I was lying by myself on the cold bathroom floor with no one to bring me saltines or water, and only then did I finally have to admit to myself that times had changed. Like, remember when we didn't even get hangovers? Maybe you'd wake up after a bender and be all, “God, I want to eat a burrito!” but you'd never have the kind of days where you're completely debilitated and can't move or eat until 7:00 p.m. Those come later when you stop believing all the amazing things alcohol had promised you—when parties feel like
Groundhog Day
and sex isn't as exciting and puking is an unfortunate nightmare instead of a badge of honor. When you're a teenager, you want to make things happen, because everything in your life feels so boring. You're desperate for something, anything, to come along and make you feel like you're in some fabulous teen movie. Fast-forward to ten years later when your life has become so bizarre and overwhelming on its own that you wouldn't dare add to the weirdness.

Things were better when we drank for the right reasons. When we wanted to feel close to each other and have new experiences and make new friends. Granted, the experiences weren't always great, and the people you befriended could be total nightmares, but it didn't matter. You could handle the disappointment. I remember barreling through so many parties determined to make the night my bitch. The lure of possibility would keep me going from new person to new person, hoping to make a connection. Finally, I'd meet someone, exchange some banter, and think, “Wow! You're so cool. I want to know more!” Four shots later, I'd blow my load and declare us new BFFs.

“I fucking love you!” I screamed at this girl Samantha, whom I had met thirty minutes earlier at the chips-and-dip section of a house party in college. The two of us instantly bonded over our love of LiveJournal and boys who didn't text us back. High off our newfound closeness, we then proceeded to take 42,069 whiskey shots.

“No, you don't understand. I'm obsessed with you,” Samantha slurred back at me. “Give me your number, bitch. We're going to get brunch in six hours!”

“I fucking love brunch,” I yelled.

“Fuck yeah, you do! Brunch besties!” Samantha squealed before dragging me into the living room so we could dance to “Fuck the Pain Away” by Peaches.

The next morning, I signed on to Facebook and saw that Samantha had already tagged me in a bunch of unflattering pictures. “UM, I THINK I FOUND MY SOUL MATE?!!” read one caption. It was a blurry photo of us hugging on the bathroom floor. I clicked on Samantha's profile, expecting an Internet presence similar to mine, but instead I got a shrine to basicness. There were Bible quotes sprinkled everywhere, FarmVille requests, and unclear ex-boyfriends. I untagged the photos immediately and never spoke to Samantha again. It was obvious I'd been wearing white wine–spritzer goggles and had the friendship equivalent of a one-night stand.

When I wasn't drinking to make friends, I was doing it to get laid. In my junior year of college, I hate–hooked up with a boy for four months, but not one of those times was sober. I don't remember a single thing about the sex. His dick could've been two inches or a foot long. I have no idea and, more important, no interest in ever knowing. I didn't like this boy, and I don't think he liked me. And even if I did have feelings for him, I'd probably still need to be drunk to initiate a hookup. I was new at this, and any kind of intimacy felt too real. Being numb was the best way to feel something honestly.