Self-Sabotage: An Antisocial Sob Story

Photo by Sammie Jayne

I went out this weekend. That’s a big deal for me because I don’t go out lately – EVER. I used to be a dirty trashy club kid who loved getting fucked up four nights a week. Now I just can’t be bothered. It’s really hard pretending to be sexy and awesome and fun when really I’m just a bag of neuroses with pretty packaging. Instead I choose to pop some sleeping pills and pass out, completely dead to the world from Friday night to Sunday arvo. But this weekend was going to be ‘different’. I started a new job and my boss decided to organise a night out for us to all get our bond on and shit. My nerves had already reared their ugly head way before the night even began. “I’m going to get wasted on the bar tab and embarrass myself”, “I have nothing in common with them”, “I like drinking in graveyards with my idiot friends, my boss thinks Ivy is a thing”.

I get there an hour and a half late and apologise profusely while one of my higher ups (everyone on this night out is technically my higher up) decides to punish me by volunteering us in a game of doubles with a group of guys at the pool table. Cause for some reflection, my romantic stints alternate between “Eugh I’m so unattractive nobody is ever going to want to be with me” and “Boys are gross ew get the fuck away from me”. It’s quite pitiful I know. My higher up, knowing full well of all this, pushes me straight towards the sharks. By this point, I’m crying inside.

I am immediately uncomfortable; I have already decided I don’t want to sleep with any of these guys. I’d rather be at home listening to “Murda Bizne$$” by Iggy Azalea and eating cake mix. One of them is making an effort to engage me. The most physically attractive of the lot, he is quite charming with his small talk. But my mind is already gone, wondering when an appropriate time to leave is, how much weed I have at home, is it enough and is my brother back at boarding school yet. I stare into Mr Charming Pool Dude’s eyes and feel nothing but pity for him. If this had been another night even a month ago, I would have definitely considered sleeping with you, or at least some hard core making out and heavy petting in a dark alley. But tonight, I don’t want you to touch me – ever. Or even talk to me. Because I’m an insecure little bitch.

“If you didn’t want to play why’d you agree to join us?” he asks, eager eyes staring back at me trying to find something to latch onto. I murmur some excuse about being conned into this before I attempt to “flirt” my way out of it. Fail. I run away so I can hide behind my boss and skull my vodka red bull.

We end up hitting up three different gigs in the name of “research” and wind up at Marquee, thoroughly wasted. All on the boss’s bar tab I might add (oh snap). I’m wearing denim cut offs and Docs with flanno tied around my waist. My boss is actually boss for getting a hood rat like me in. I don’t want to be here but. I want to be curled up in bed with the covers over my head crying crocodile tears, knowing that I shouldn’t be so depressed. I have so many things going for me; think positive, life is beautiful, suck it up. All this, yet I’m unable to stop tearing up at the ugly demon thoughts haunting my cluttered head.

I come back from the bathrooms, (which deserve an article themselves, it’s human depravity at its finest in there) and I have lost my group to the night. I deem it acceptable to bail and go home to be alone and spend the rest of the night physically and emotionally avoiding people.  I guess this weekend wasn’t actually any different.