Misadventures in JulieLand

The first time my parents went out of town for the weekend and left me home alone, I was so excited. Finally I would have my moment in the spotlight. I was absolutely going to throw a party, and it would be the best party anyone had ever attended.  I was determined. 

The first thing I did was decide I didn’t want word to spread about it. I wanted to have a great party, but I did not want to get in trouble for it. Letting word spread would lead to a house jam-packed with kids of all ages from my high school.  I was looking to keep the numbers closer to 30 than 300. I invited my close friends and told them they could bring their significant others.  I invited a few more handfuls so it wouldn’t turn into just a bunch of couples sitting around.  A few random people showed up anyway, but the numbers were still controllable, so I didn’t mind.

Second, I found a way to obtain alcohol. With someone’s fake ID, we bought cases upon cases of shitty beer, Mike’s Hard Lemonade (the choice drink of high school females who don’t like beer), liquor, etc.  We managed to fill half of the back deck with all of the booze.  I took my parents’ liquor and hid it in the trunk of my dad’s car so no one would be tempted to get into that.  I took pictures of every room in hopes that I would be able to make sure everything was in its proper place after all was said and done.  I was serious about this party. 

There are only a few specific events I actually remember about the party:

1.       This kid from a neighboring school (who no one really liked, but he was friends with someone’s boyfriend, so he ended up there anyway) took literally every single pill in my house trying to get high.  They were mostly vitamins. He threw them up all over the bushes in my parents’ backyard.  The idea of someone taking all of the vitamins had not crossed my mind or I would’ve hit those with my parents’ alcohol…

2.       My best friend (Girl Ryan) decided it’d be really funny to replace my parakeets’ water with vodka. The female died. 

3.       There were two foreign exchange students there; one from Germany and one from Belgium.  They rolled the biggest joint I have seen to this day using multiple papers on my parents’ coffee table. 

4.       At some point someone’s older brother showed up wanting to buy some of our alcohol off of us (knowing full well we’d purchased more than enough for ourselves).  They showed up with a spotlight.  Someone upstairs yelled, “COPS!” and pandemonium ensued.

The foreign exchange students took off into the woods with a kid that lived on one of the streets behind me. They were yelling about getting deported as they ran. They took their gigantic joint with them.

Girl Ryan fell up, then down the stairs trying to run and hide in one of the bedrooms.

Others were hiding just inside the tree line of the woods, watching the back of the house. 

My 6’5” friend tried to run the opposite direction of everyone else and landed face down in the tiny 2-ft-deep pond in the back yard.  He did not immediately get up because he was so frightened and drunk, he didn’t try to catch himself.  His best friend came running inside freaking out, insisting he was drowning, instead of offering to help him up or any logical behavior. I still have the kid’s shorts.

When I opened the door and told everyone it was fine, it was just Soandso’s brother, it took about twenty minutes for everyone to filter back into the house and onto the property. In the meantime, I sat and had a beer with them and laughed about the people we could see peering out from the trees. 

5.       That was the first time I’d ever met Faith. We would later become unhealthily codependent before our tragic, drug-induced downfall. She was fifteen at the time and had heard about the party through one of the other girls. I was sixteen.  After everyone came back, I was laying on the couch, drunk, trying to calm down. She had sat down, put my head in her lap, and started petting my head as she introduced herself and thanked me for letting her hang out.  We joked around quite a bit and hung out together for most of the rest of the night. We were the only smokers, so we bonded quite a bit over that. She fascinated me. There was something about the girl that was so intriguing, like she was the sun and I was a planet slowly being pulled into her orbit. Her blond curls bounced happily, framing her face with her wide eyes and big smile.  Everything about her seemed so upbeat and thrilled about life.  It was irresistible.

 6.       One of my friends was in an absolute panic, wanting to call her mom to come pick her up. It took literally the entire party to convince her that she had to not be so selfish because she would screw every single one of us if she made that phone call.  If she wanted to go home, there were at least five people who weren’t drinking and would gladly drive her down the street. She ended up going to sleep in my parents’ bed instead after she realized her mom would probably not be pleased with her intoxication.

The next day, we cleaned thoroughly. Faith helped as much as anyone else did. I hosed the cigarette ashes off the back deck and the vomit out of the bushes. I took the booze out of the trunk and put it all back in the cabinet. I went upstairs and made sure all the bedrooms were in order. Everyone made rounds to make sure there were no beer cans or anything left around. Faith took the little bit of leftover alcohol to her house, stating that her mom usually wasn’t home and she’d be able to hide it easily.  She suggested we have a party at her place soon to finish it off. 

When my parents returned, I thought I was in the clear for sure. We had taken so many precautions. It was so perfect. Then they asked what happened to the vitamins. I had nothing. To this day, I don’t know how I forgot about the vitamins. I was caught. Then they started finding random beer cans we’d somehow missed. They found one behind a picture frame in their room.  They were all in obscure places where no one should’ve been placing a damn beer in the first place.  My mom immediately called all of my female friends to get them in trouble as well, assuming they had all been here (which they had), despite me trying to protest and claim an entirely different group had come over. 

My friends didn’t speak to me for several weeks, convinced I had ratted them out.  We were all grounded.

In high school, I remember thinking parties were everything.  If you had one, you gained status points in the social cliques.  If you didn’t attend, you would be missing out on a plethora of drunken tales; Soandso broke her ankle falling down the stairs, Thisguy and Thatguy got in a fight, Whatshisface passed out and got drawn all over!  These were very important events at the time.  If you weren’t present when they happened, you were missing history in the making. No one would be sober enough to remember exactly what happened to fill you in on Monday. 

As a result of these feelings, I started attending as many parties as possible. This didn’t mean I had any concept of how to obtain alcohol for said parties, and you were generally expected to provide your own at that age.  I encountered this problem for the first time (being a girl, it’s usually pretty easy to get someone to let you throw in on their case, or just convince people to give you a beer here and there) when my friend threw her first party. I chose to remedy this by stealing a bottle of chardonnay from my parents.

Now, I had absolutely no idea that wine would affect me a little differently than beer. I looked at it as a giant bottle of beer, not as an entirely different alcoholic beverage that would be significantly stronger and take longer to affect me than beer. 

I made my rounds through the party before settling in with a group of good friends out on the driveway.  The girl throwing the party was too afraid of the cops getting called to even play music, so it was pretty dead.  They were passing around a joint and I opened my bottle of wine.  I was bored, and for some reason feeling very socially awkward, so I was hoping the alcohol would hit me pretty quickly. I grew impatient after all of ten minutes.

I looked down at my bottle. Then at my friends around me casually drinking their shitty beers and talking. Then back at the bottle. There was ¾ of the bottle left. I raised the thick glass to my lips and started to chug. Conversation ceased as my friends watched. The sweet liquid poured down my throat. I took short breaths in and out between gulps. I finished the entire bottle. I belched loudly. My friends cheered.  We all laughed. 

I still felt nothing. I was frustrated. “Wine sucks,” I thought to myself, “Why would anyone want to drink this worthless shit? It’s not that good and it doesn’t even get you fucked up.”

Ten minutes later, I started to slur my words. My friends asked me if I was okay. I insisted that I was. I got up to go to the bathroom and stumbled. I weaved my way down the empty driveway, through the mostly vacant house, and made it to the bathroom successfully. When I came back, I wasn’t feeling so great. I was offered a ride home with a friend that was leaving and I took it. 

By the time we pulled up in front of my house, I was right on-time for my 11:30 curfew.  I stepped out of the car and fell on the ground. The world was spinning. I felt like I was on the fasted merry-go-round in existence.  This was a cruel trick. This is the shit they put astronauts through from training. I don’t want to be a fucking astronaut…

I decided I should just hold onto the driveway for a minute.  My friend asked if I was okay. I slurred that I was fine and she could go on home; I’d make it inside in a minute.  She leaned across her passenger seat, closed the door, and drove off.  I was still holding onto the driveway. If I had let go at that point, I would’ve fallen off the planet. 

I finally worked up the courage to go inside. The lights were on. “Fuck.” The TV was on in the family room. “Fuck.” I shuffled into the doorway to the family room, convinced that if I didn’t actually pick my feet up, I’d be far more convincing about my sobriety.  I leaned against the door frame and looked at my parents. I gave them a big grin. That would show them I was sober, and obviously thrilled to be home safe for the evening.

“How was your night?” Dad asked. Their stares were eating into my soul. “Fine,” I said, still smiling. “Where’d you go?” piped in Mom.  “Katie’zzparty. Like Isaid beforeIleft. Ima go sleep.”

I had done it. I cleared the parents! I’m a master of deception! Now all I have to do is shuffle all the way to my room so I don’t fall over, try not to fall off Earth, and they’ll be none the wiser. 

I made it to my room. I walked up to my bed, stripping as I went, and crawled under the covers. I managed to reach across the mile-wide gap and turn off the light on my bedside table. I had made it. The evening was a success. 

The next morning, I woke up at started puking.  I told my parents I didn’t feel good and had probably gotten the flu from one of the girls at the party. They had rented a log splitter. They made me sit in a lawn chair beside the unnecessarily loud machine in the sun and watch them, since I was apparently too sick to actually help them.  I tried confessing that I’d had a couple drinks again. They said they knew. I was astounded. How did they see past my amazing ruse of sobriety?

They grounded me for a month. I couldn’t drink white wine without feeling like I was going to vomit until about two months ago.

After my sophomore year of high school started, a month or so after the day I ended up babysitting everyone on the trip I didn’t know they were going to be taking, weed became very prevalent in my group of friends. I’d steered away from the people I’d been hanging out with, since they were getting into thing I had decided were beyond my realm of acceptance.  Instead I was spending a lot of time with the guy that I had shared my first kiss with at 11 years old. As in peck kiss, not tongue down your throat making out.

He was older, so he already had his license and was driving me to school. It just so happened that he had also turned into a huge pothead.  Hottest pothead I’ve ever seen in my life, but still a huge pothead.  Josh: If you ever read this, give your parents a high five for me. 

One day I decided that it was time I try this magical, happiness inducing smoke myself.  We drove his old van behind this abandoned house I had wanted to explore for some time.  He’d picked up an apple at the grocery store and turned it into a bowl.  The cassette deck blared the mix I’d made him for driving me to and from school every day.

He packed the apple and showed me what to do, holding the lighter just above the pungent buds and putting his lips to the hole just below.  As he inhaled, the flame dipped and he let go of the lighter, inhaling deep and holding his breath momentarily as he passed the apple to me.  As he exhaled a large cloud of smoke, he told me to do exactly like he just had. 

I felt the smoke hit my lungs. It was a burning sensation way stronger than any cigarette I’d smoked at that point.  I tried to hold my breath like he had, but instead coughed so hard I felt like I was going to pass out.  When the fit of coughing stopped, Josh chuckled, saying my eyes were red.  I said, “No shit, I thought I was going to break blood vessels in my face.”  I didn’t know he meant that I looked high.  I didn’t feel anything.  My lungs just hurt. 

I took another hit and coughed again, wondering why anyone would be interested in this nonsense.    I felt nothing. Josh assured me that people often don’t feel anything the first time, but that I looked “high as hell.”  I opened a beer and waited for my next turn, convinced that at some point I’d start feeling something.

I never did that first time.  We left our quiet little spot and drove to the school football game. I walked around wondering if I looked as high as he’d said I did. I really felt nothing. One of Josh’s best friends answered that question for me when he walked up and high-fived me, excitedly saying something that amounted to, “Welcome to the Pothead Club!”

I spent the rest of the evening convinced someone was going to catch me before I’d even gotten a chance to feel what it was like to get stoned. I looked over my shoulder constantly and refused to stand still for more than a minute at a time. I felt like a gazelle trying to get away from a lion that I knew was going to take me down if it ever actually moved into my line of site.  I was absolutely convinced one of the faculty members would drop out of the sky, point in my face and say (loud enough for the entire crowd to hear), “You’re high! Expulsion!” I was convinced I had ruined my entire future. “Say goodbye to those dreams of a psychology degree from Yale, Julie,” I said to myself, “You decided to smoke weed out of an apple with your buddies instead.  Can’t have both.”

I did not get caught, but I did sleep very well that night. 

When I first heard that people ate mushrooms that grew on shit to “trip balls,” I thought people were lying to me. When I not only witnessed this, but people smoking cigarettes dipped in PCP in the same night, I felt like I’d walked into another dimension.

After that first cigarette, when we had finally arrived at our friend’s house, this is what we walked into. His mother was home, by the way.  She was of the mindset that if we didn’t do these things here, we’d just do them elsewhere.  I’m sure she was right, but the fact that we were allowed to do so many things there blows my mind to this day. I just watched though. I have my limits.  A cigarette is one thing, shrooms and PCP weren’t for me.  I drank a beer and played babysitter instead.  I can’t remember what Liz or Ryan did. I imagine the same as myself.

What I do remember is a scrawny kid I knew only as Eyeballs staring at me as I sat casually in my lawn chair watching everyone act weird.  He reached out and caressed my cheek. My eyes got wide as I started back at him, wondering what the fuck he was about to do to me. 

“How’s your face movin’ like that?” he asked, mouth open in awe.

“What are you talking about?” I replied, not entirely understanding the effects of hallucinogens still at this point. 

He didn’t say anything else. I removed his hand and pushed it back towards him. He continued to stare at me. It took quite a while for me to stop being thoroughly creeped out by this. 

Eyeballs’ friend, Crawford, kept getting closer to the pool. I watched carefully, expecting to have to jump in and save his ass at any minute. He kept pointing excitedly and saying the trees were trying to walk across the water.  They were waving at him!

A couple that I didn’t know brought out the PCP-coated cigarettes at that point.  I didn’t understand what they were doing, but when I heard the phrase “PCP,” an alarm went off in my head telling me I should stay far away.  There had to be a reason none of the people I knew wanted anything to do with that. I remember looking at them and thinking it looked like the cigarettes were coated in tar from the tip to about halfway. 

I decided I should go see what everyone else was doing.  Before I came back up to see the kind of effect PCP had on people, the mother had kicked them out.  Apparently PCP was beyond the realm of acceptance for her household.

At the time I had a huge crush on a guy named Ben who hung out with that group. I’m pretty sure I was more obvious about this than I realized. I also realize now that as a friend of my ex, he was off limits. 

I found Ben staring at a fish tank full of bubble-eyed, flowy-tailed goldfish in the basement.  I sat next to him on the bed and tried to talk.  He told me they were on fire. I did not understand at the time that the littlest things can throw you off when you’re tripping. When he didn’t say much, I kept trying different topics to try to get a conversation going. An older me would’ve taken the hint and left him alone…

He got up and went into the adjoining bedroom. He turned on drum and bass AS LOUD AS IT WOULD GO and lay down on the bed.  I lay next to him for a minute before realizing how obvious it was that the really didn’t want me around him right then.  I went back upstairs.  Sorry if I fucked anything up for you, Ben.

I don’t remember anything else about that evening. It was a long time ago.  I do remember that was the first time it had crossed my mind that maybe I should re-evaluate my friends.  I still see some of those guys from time to time. Most of them are still in this city. All of them have their lives together and have been successful in their endeavors. 

Everyone always remembers their first, whether they want to or not. In this case, my first is the first cigarette that would lead me to be a heavy smoker for 11 years.  Just over four months nicotine-free! Woo!

My first cigarette was a Newport and it came from a pack with only three left in it that someone had obviously thrown/lost out their car window.  Liz From England, Girl Ryan and I walked from Ryan’s house to our friend Kyle’s across town.  Liz saw the pack and ran to pick it up, thrilled to see there were three cigarettes inside.  She grabbed one, pulled a lighter out of her pocket, and lit it. 

Ryan and I were astounded as we watched her. Smoking was bad! And she seemed so used to it. She even had her own lighter!

I was intimidated. I imagine Ryan was as well, but God forbid we ever admit this to each other because we were adolescent females and showing weakness means your “friend” will turn on you and tear you to shreds for the rest of the catty masses. 

Liz asked if we wanted one.  Ryan said yes, lit up, and failed to inhale. I swear to God, to this day, the woman has never fully inhaled a cigarette.  She just pulls the smoke into her mouth like a cigar and puffs it out.  Liz attempted to correct her at the time, but quickly lost interest in teaching as she enjoyed her first cigarette since returning to the states. 

At this point I decide to try one myself. Liz lights the cigarette for me and I cough hard as the minty smoke hits my virgin lungs.  This doesn’t discourage me. I smoke the whole thing (actually inhaling) and reach the bliss that is the new smoker’s buzz by the time we reach our friend’s house.  I’m pretty much champion of the world right then. “Nothing cooler than a 15 year old smoking a cigarette,” I think to myself, as I awkwardly attempt to flick my cigarette like Liz, burning myself as it drops lightly right where I’m standing. I step on it to put it out. I obviously meant to do that…  

Ryan sees my bumbling error and just throws hers, making it about a foot farther than I did. There’s just no way to make a cigarette properly fly through the air unless you learn now to flick it properly. 

I remember this event almost like a rite of passage at this point, but I regret ever smoking another cigarette in my life.  I can’t imagine a day when I will genuinely not crave them anymore. Don’t do it, kids. Just don’t. Plus, finding that one store that will sell to you at fifteen years old that you’re a loyal customer to even though it’s all the way across town is hard enough as it is without being able to drive to get yourself there. It’s a mistake. DON’T SMOKE CIGARETTES.  

When I was 15, Cincinnati had some pretty serious race riots.  You can look them up on Wikipedia if you’re so inclined. We’re known for being a pretty racist city anyway, but on this occasion, cops shot an unarmed black kid and the community was definitely pissed about it.  This is not the first or last of these incidents. Cincinnati cops are generally pussies trying to act like hard asses in my opinion. I’m sure this doesn’t apply to all, but those of you who I’ve encountered, particularly from District 5: FUCK YOU.

During the riots, there was a city-wide curfew due to white people being the target of righteous black rage. People were getting clocked in the head with bricks while driving, local stores looted, etc. Things were a mess for a little while there.

I don’t remember the time of the curfew; I just remember that I was not in the mood to be kept inside on one of these days. My best female friend was over at my house spending the night. We decided we wanted to sneak out and walk over to my friend’s house.

“His place is just through the woods. I fucking walk the dog through them all the time. I know them like the back of my fucking hand,” I stated confidently.  “I don’t know why we’ve got a fucking curfew anyway. It’s not like the riots are going to reach all the way out here.”  When I was a teenager, cussing meant I was sophisticated and important and the more I could fit into a sentence, the more grown up I sounded.      

We got a couple flashlights and crept out of my parents’ house.   

I don’t know if you’ve ever attempted to navigate the woods at night before, but in the summer time when all the trees have all their leaves and are blocking out every little ounce of light from the moon you can’t see a damn thing. Even with flashlights, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me where we were, and I really do know those woods like the back of my hand. It was a straight shot from my parents’ house to the backyards of the houses a couple streets down from our friend’s house.  It took us over two hours to find out way there, and we ended up only one street in.  We still had another half hour of walking before reaching our friend’s house, easily. 

When we finally made it, it was something like 2:30am.  Our friend was fast asleep in his bed.  At this time, we didn’t have these fancy cell phones like kids today, so there was no way to reach us and find out if we were still coming.  We woke him up and talked with him for maybe 15 minutes before he drove us back and dropped us off down the street from my parents’ house. 

My first time sneaking out was not worth it, but at least I didn’t get caught.

About two weeks after my first successful encounter with alcohol, I decided to try it again. Boyfriend at the time was out of town with his family. I ended up at a party consisting mostly of his friends and was entirely unprepared for the differences between liquor and booze, and especially unprepared for them playing a game where they put acid in random cups without telling anyone. SURPRISE! Unexpected hallucinations!

Here’s what I actually remember:

1. Arrive at party
2. Grab a bottle of Orange Hooch (shut up, I was 15)
3. Post up in a chair on the porch with people I know, drink large amounts of Hooch and Coors Light
4. Go up to the bartender (girl throwing the party’s older brother in college was in town. He had his friends there as well and was playing bartender for everyone) and obtain a drink I thought was just vodka and Sprite
5. Wake up the next morning in my own bed and immediately run to the bathroom to puke. 
6. Inform my parents that I drank again and this time was less successful. I got grounded, but they let me lay in bed and recover instead of bothering me (If I had been my own kid, I’d have made my life a living hell)

Here’s what actually happened:

1. When I grabbed that cup of vodka and Sprite, it was in a plastic cup sitting with about 20 other plastic cups on the table in front of Bartender.  Apparently 15 of those 20 cups had LSD in them. I picked a tainted cup.
2. I tried to do the worm, but really I just flopped around awkwardly on the floor in a very crowded room.
3. I insisted in a panic that there were leprechauns trying to eat my ankles and refused to put my feet on the floor.  I made people give me piggy back rides everywhere because the leprechauns only wanted me.
4. I jumped off the edge of something into one of my boyfriend’s friends’ laps and rubbed his belly.
5. I punched some girl in the face and cited that, “her face was comin’ at me and I had to stop it,” as my reasoning behind it.  Fortunately, 15 year old me couldn’t hit very hard.  
6. My best friend locked herself in a bathroom and couldn’t figure out how to get out, so they had to take the door off the hinges.
7. When my sober friend tried to take me home, I spun around in circles and fell on the ground, refusing to get out of the grass. 
8. I YELLED ABOUT HOW PRETTY THE STARS WERE AND I WISHED ALL THE HOUSES AROUND WOULD TURN THEIR FUCKING LIGHTS OFF!
9. When I got home, my parents were still awake in their room with the light on, which meant I had to go in and let them know that I was home. I had made up some lie about going to a church festival (there are a lot of them around here).  I made up a story then about going on the ferris wheel and how I hadn’t been feeling well since I ate some kind of fried food. Then I laughed a bunch and passed out cold on the floor in their room.
10. Needless to say, my parents were not surprised when I informed them that I’d been fucked up the night before. 

When you’re told to watch your drink, and not to take one from someone you don’t know, listen to that advice. You’re not necessarily going to get Rufied by some frat boy. You might get acid dropped in your drink by some fucking hippy instead and then hurt your boobs trying to do the worm.

Stepping away from stories for a minute, I just wanted to take a moment to bitch about pharmaceutical companies fucking with my brain. It’s happened so many times now that it’s hard to get me to take a damn Aspirin when I have a headache. The only mind altering drug I can get behind is the anxiety pill that’s taken as needed, not on a regular basis to establish dependency.  I’ve been addicted to psych meds, the withdrawals when you get off of them are horrible and if you can get your shit together on your own without drugs, I highly recommend you do so. All they do is cover up the problem and make you not care about shit anyway, not fix you.

Point of this is, I just realized that I was able to handle life a lot better before I got on Nuvaring almost a year ago. Since then, I’ve been an emotional wreck to the point of not being able to get out of bed for extended periods of time on more than one occasion.  I’m done. Fucking done. Fuck hormones. They tamper with my already only mostly stable brain. This shit kicked my bipolar disorder and PTSD that I thought I’d gotten over years ago back into high gear Spring 2011 and I’m just now noticing it. FUCK HORMONES.

The year I turned 15 was a big year for me in terms of my inevitable corruption.  Before this, I had been a veritable angel.  I had almost all A’s in school, I was pretty innocent as far as boys were concerned (had only just started dating my first serious boyfriend, who I now kind of think is a douche - sorry buddy, but you wear loafers, talk about things like yachting, and still hit on me to this day regardless of whether you’re single or not) and although I attended parties, I only watched the debauchery instead of partaking in it myself.  Despite what my parents think, I was a really good kid.

And then I turned 15. 

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