Notes From Last Night

Chapter One - Resolutions

New Years Eve.

This is the night where we're all supposed to evaluate our lives. To look back on the past twelve months, or even longer, and figure out what we did right and what we did wrong. Now, nine times out of ten people look to the bad stuff they did or the regrets that they have because that's just what we do as people. We're programmed to focus on anything negative and put the positives to the very back of our minds. Just for New Years Eve.

A day later and it's all forgotten about and we go back into our ignorant ways about how we live our lives. It's not a healthy cycle, but one we all do, and I am no different.

As I stood there in the nightclub and the DJ announced that there was only three minutes left of a year where I'd once again failed to achieve anything of any real note (he didn't use as many words but I knew he was thinking it), I couldn't help finishing my drink in one sip and ordering another instantly.

I scanned the crowd for my two friends, only partly wondering how I'd lost them in the first place. I say partly because I'm pretty sure I already knew the answer.

I could give all the bullshit excuses of how we were just three guys in the biggest club in the city on arguably the biggest night of the year. Or how even though we weren't tiny, we weren't giants either and sometimes got pushed around by bigger crowds. Or hell, even that it's just almost impossible to see anything in a dark room, lit only by the intermittent flashes of light, every colour of the rainbow whilst hundreds of people are dancing together like they're all in sync. But I'm just gonna go ahead and tell the truth.

I'd been drinking for eight hours straight and I was pretty fucking loaded.

It was at this moment, the moment where I was surrounded by five hundred people and yet I'd never felt more alone in my entire life, that I started to think about my immediate future. The one that involved the fast approaching year. I know you know what I'm talking about.

This was going to be my year.

I wasn't going to be the same stupid kid anymore. I wasn't going to spend every weekend seeing how drunk I could get and I certainly wasn't going to make chasing girls the biggest priority in life anymore. This was the year I was going to make something of myself.

As the ball dropped and midnight hit, I raised my glass to whoever was watching, whoever felt the same way or whoever was worried about my swaying from side to side in the drunken haze that had consumed my life that night.

That was the last thing I remember about that night.

I woke up the next morning and found that I couldn't take any of my fingertips off my forehead without it feeling like a marching band was tuning up between my ears.

"Fuck," I groaned as I tried sitting up, only to repeat the word when I realised that the four walls that surrounded me weren't my own. In fact, not only was this not my room, this wasn't even my house!

I looked to my left and saw a not so nice looking girl sleeping not so peacefully next to me. She was snoring like a banshee and it seriously wasn't helping my hangover.

"At least we didn't have sex –" I began to think to myself before seeing my underwear on the floor at the other side of the room.

Aw shit.

Now, it was in this moment where I said the same thing everyone says to themselves on New Year's Day.

"Well . . . I guess there's always next year."

*

So you're probably thinking that you know me by now, and I don't blame you. How can I when you're probably eighty-five per-cent right? But let's see if we can fill in some of the blanks shall we?