My emotional hangover is killing me

They tell me to stop making death jokes, but they're so funny?

There is no pill for the mornings after grief, there is no perfect meal after betrayal, and there is no vitamin or smoothie to settle my stomach. Remedies and comfort food are pointless at a time like this. No, I don’t want a cup of ginger tea. Get that shit away from me.

I’ve got the emotional hangover from hell, after months of life throwing me around and bashing my skull against the wall like I’m just a doll that misbehaved.

You name it, I’ve probably experienced it at least a few times at some point in my life. Because of that fact, I’m usually fairly resilient even if I do complain about it. The best of us can get worn down sometimes.

It hurt when they shut off my light, do you happen to have any painkillers I can borrow?

This hangover hurts my head and makes me sick.

It makes me still.

I cannot move, I cannot breathe. Did you feel it when my skin went cold and turned to stone?

Don’t you hate it when someones and somethings die, or your job makes you want to jump off a building? I hate accidents and loss, I hate miscommunications and mistakes. The days after sometimes leave me reeling. The mornings after a fight are no better, nor are the ones after you hurt yourself with memories instead.

Life can be so brutal and we’ve all probably noticed that it’s a constant cycle of fixing and breaking things. It feels like there’s always something to recover from, and I am just so fucking sensitive that I can’t stand it.

They say it gets better and I swear it does. But life is just a loop and I’ll be doing this over and over again until I’m dead.

Every week there is new damage to mend. There are new cuts and bruises to match a few fresh scrapes on my knees. I am in a constant state of recovery, and it’s no wonder I’m exhausted. I think you might understand. I hope that you do.

This week, my body went on strike. I’ve spent most of my days in pain and it’s given me no choice but to rest. Quite frankly, it’s pissing me off.

Yeah, poor me or whatever. Truthfully, I don’t want to write this. I want to write about Gilmore Girls and comfort shows, or about everything that’s wrong with Taylor Swift’s latest merch drop. I want to make things lighter and I really want to write something else right now, but I can’t get a damn word out until I crush every last bit of sadness out of me. I’m afraid I’ll never get the job done.

I thought I’d write about my emotional hangover in the hope that it might help me, but maybe it helps you too. Maybe you know all too well that it’s getting tiring being this sad all of the time.

Emotional hangovers are exactly like any other kind of hangover, except they last for so much longer and I cannot shower the smell of grief from me like I can with gin or pub air. It lingers for an undecided amount of time, overstaying it’s welcome even when I try to kick it out in the morning.

It’s like when you reach the age of 30 and hangovers from tequila suddenly last for three days, except these ones might get drawn out for weeks on end.

They say misery loves company, and I’m so afraid my sadness is contagious. They tell me not to worry, and they insist I don’t apologise for not being myself. They tell me to stop making jokes about offing myself, even though I think they’re funny. Apparently, jokes about death are deeply upsetting to everyone other than the person making them. Fine, ruin my fun.

I say that I’ll stop because it upsets them so I just tell them in my head instead. I pull away, because I think I’ve been too much of a dark cloud for them lately. I noticed they stopped replying when I said I felt like dying, and the strength of their silence when I told them I had dissociated.

It makes me feel like I’m a burden.

Logically, I know that’s not true. I internalise so much, packing things away in my brain and only really bothering people if I have to. Even so, I worry that I’ve been too much to deal with so I send anxious texts to my friends, and promise them I’ll leave them alone and let them breathe. I give basic responses so that they don’t reply. There’s sadness in my fingers and sourness in my mouth, and misery settles into my pores. I worry all of it will escape from me so I shut the world out before it gets infected. I say it’s to protect them but maybe it’s to protect me, so I don’t have to deal with it if they leave me.

I think sometimes it’s for the best to disappear, and sometimes I do need time in my head - whether I like it or not. The truth is, I carry so much of this alone and it’s kind of my fault, I just can’t share out my pain to make it lighter.

Some people might want to be left alone, but not me. That’s why I find vanishing acts so painful because most of the time, I need company. Even if it’s in silence, I need to be shown that everything is okay. I need you to reply. Or I’ll just sit here and fiddle with my hair, or maybe snap a nail or two. There is a wound in my mind, an echo of what came before. I worry that my anxieties are too much, that you might rise with the sun and discard me like your yesterdays, or maybe misplace me like a memory or receipt.

One day, this particular hangover will be long gone but that day feels impossible and the hours never end. Since everything happened, time has been blurry and long. Sometimes I can’t see straight.

In the mornings after the fights, the falls and the sudden death, I’ve been too tender and exposed.

Through all these mornings after, I’ve played back the worst of it all. I’d get to the end of the tapes, and rewind them again. The more I watched it all play out, the worse I felt. I couldn’t stop. I needed to sit with it, because what if I’d done something wrong? Maybe it was punishment, or maybe it was a test and I could have changed the outcome. I played it all back, and I counted minutes and messages. None of it helped.

My head splits open, all heavy skies and thunderclaps but I think I used to be like the sun. I used to be good at this because after all, I had a lifetime to learn how to be the light. I’ve had decades to learn how to be bright, how to make myself your favourite colour and shoulder to cry on.

I’ve monitored moods and fixed broken hearts, and I’ve been a knight in shining armour more times than I can count. Honestly I’m happy about that, because at least I was useful for a little while. My flames would flicker and scatter across your nights, and you’d know I’d been there because my perfume smells a little like smoke. I think I used to be comforting.

It makes me mad that I can’t be that way right now. What if someone needs me and I can’t help them? I should have known that the world can’t be trusted to look after things, and it killed my light just as it burns out the sun, one day at a time. Now I sit in the dark and I know there’s nothing left to set alight.

I am just rage and volcanoes and storms, there are bubbles in my chest so I think my heart might just explode all over the walls.

Hyperbole aside, the anxiety is crushing the life out of me.

I cannot move, I cannot scream. Can you hear it when I grit my teeth?

Even if I make no noise, I know my insides are creaking out loud like an old, unloved house. My body is always the one thing that betrays me.

I stare at the wall and count my nightmares, there have been 14 of them so far since it all went down. I say words like “dead” and “betrayed” over and over in my head, until they don’t sound like words anymore.

If I don’t move too much, the knife inside me won’t hit my vital organs. If I don’t speak too much, my tongue won’t ruin the best me or the best of you. These days, I can’t trust my mouth or trust my movements so I just have to stay perfectly still. I just need to sink into the mattress and keep staring at the wall.

Too much has happened lately, and it’s left me unmoored.

Because all I do is pick myself up and try again. How many more times do I have to do this?

How many times do people have to drive steel in my spine so they can forget they don’t have one? I wonder if they’ve considered if it will make me spineless too.

How many times do I need to fall flat on my face and carry new scars?

How many times do I have to keep my heart beating when it doesn’t want to?

How many times do I have to force myself to forget the falls, the fights, and the sudden stab in my chest as I listened out for one last tiny breath?

I will not say there is a war in my mind, because life has proven time and time again that this isn’t in my head. These things have happened.

I am at war with my worlds.

I cannot move, I cannot scream.

Would you even hear me if I did?

Listen, I’ve had a volatile life. I’m hardened in a lot of ways and I can tolerate a lot most of the time, and that’s how I know it is a war of the worlds, not a war of my mind. It’s death and loss, pretend love and a life of mess.

Because of that, I know you won’t love me when I have nothing left to give. Maybe we’ll just have to play pretend, until the hangover is over.

Like any bad hangover, there is no cure. This is just the way it goes. Potions and ointments are no good here, but I will swallow down my medicine. I throw back ibuprofen every few hours and take sips of water. I need to be sick and I let it happen, rinsing off a toothbrush afterwards.

I need to get this sadness out. I keep telling myself the longer this goes on, the closer I’m getting to the end. It can’t feel this way forever, can it?

I need orange juice and gentle things, I need closeness and secrets. I need hands that trust mine and eyes that have hope in them, so that maybe I can borrow them for a little while.

The only way out is through. My stomach has to twist, my skin has to turn into snow. The acid needs to rise up my throat, and the bad needs to be forced out of me.

I cannot move, I cannot scream. You cannot hear it when my lungs collapse, and you don’t seem to notice that I cannot breathe. You cannot count my tiny deaths.

One day you’ll be a silver scar, and I’ll touch you so I never forget. I’ll leave you on my skin with the rest.