I woke up with my mouth tasting like regret and nutmeg.
The light was rude. The kind of light that doesn’t ask how you’re doing, just exposes everything. Cigarettes in the sink. An empty glass on its side, as it had fainted. My phone is face down, which is never an accident. I didn’t remember going to bed, only the vague sense that I had argued with the kitchen chair and lost.
Water helped. A little. So did sitting very still and pretending my thoughts were wildlife that might spook if I moved too fast.
I opened the laptop.
Oh.
Right.
I had written. I could tell immediately by the tone—confident, lyrical, slightly unhinged. The voice I use when alcohol convinces me I’m both braver and more honest than I actually am. I read it once quickly, then again slower, the way you reread a letter you didn’t mean to send.
It wasn’t… wrong. That’s what unsettled me.
The president part made me cringe at first. Morning sobriety hates metaphors it didn’t approve. But the comparison held up. Power talking to itself. Promises with no return address. I hadn’t invented that feeling; I’d just loosened its tie.
The ex—unfortunately, also accurate. I wanted to roll my eyes and delete that section, but my stomach clenched in a way that told me the truth had landed. “Concern as a disguise for control.” I wouldn’t have written that sober. Or rather, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to. Sober me prefers softer words. Safer ones. The kind that don’t escalate.
The hangover pulsed behind my eyes, steady as a metronome. I drank coffee and waited for the nausea to pass, like it always does, eventually, if you don’t panic.
Then there was... Well... The restaurant man. The one I pretended not to be writing about while absolutely writing about. Reading it now, I felt exposed in a different way—not embarrassed, just… seen. I’d reduced him to smells and actions because I didn’t trust myself to name the feeling. Feeding people. Listening. Telling me to eat. Even sober, that still felt like something. Not a promise. Not a future. Just a fact. And facts, I’m learning, are easier to live with than fantasies.
I scrolled to the end. The unraveling. The sentences that slid sideways and then off the page entirely. Last night, that had felt poetic. This morning, it read like exhaustion finally getting the microphone.
Here’s the sober truth: the year didn’t make sense because I kept trying to narrate it while I was still inside it. I used men as landmarks. I used politics as weather. I used alcohol as a translator when what I needed was patience.
But I don’t regret writing it. Not really. There’s something useful about seeing your thoughts without their makeup on. Hungover clarity is cruel, but it’s honest. It doesn’t flatter. It doesn’t catastrophize either. It just says: This is what you were trying to say. This is what you’re carrying.
I didn’t text anyone. Not the ex. Not the new man. Definitely not about the president. I closed the laptop, rinsed the glass, and opened a window.
Next time I write about the year, I might do it with tea instead of eggnog. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe the point isn’t sobriety or intoxication, but learning which truths require which conditions to surface.
For now, I’m going to eat something.
And forgive last night’s version of me.