It’s Definitely Okay To Get Drunk On A Monday With Your Girlfriends Sometimes

Sometimes it’s completely acceptable to grab your girlfriends and pour glasses of Salted Caramel Smirnoff mixed with root beer on a Monday night.

Why? Life sucks sometimes, and you just have to.

You don’t go in with the intent of getting drunk, it just happens. You grab yourself a big mason jar, fill it with a good amount of vodka since it smells like one of those caramel apples you get fresh from the pumpkin patch, and then add ice and root beer and a little striped straw to make it look cute.

You grab some fatty snack foods, because why not? And you start talking about why you hate your part-time job, how your boyfriend just doesn’t get it, and how you’re not even sure what you want to do with the rest of your life. You know, those no-big-deal-I’m-just-freaking-out type of conversations you can only have with your girlfriends.

You start sipping. But then it just tastes so damn good and before you know it, the glass is half-empty and you’re feeling a little dizzy. You start thinking about all the happy things—sleeping in your super-soft bed, the frozen pizza you’ve decided in this moment (10:22pm) that you absolutely need, and your boyfriend. Wait, why were you even mad at him in the first place?

Your anxieties melt away like a stick of butter in the microwave. You start to feel like a little, warm puddle. The decisions of what teaching jobs you’ll apply for, where you’re going to live when you’re done with school, and whether or not your relationship has long-term-long-distance-potential fade to the back of your mind.

I’ll be fine, you tell yourself. You hiccup. You giggle. You start feeling like the smartest person in the entire world. And as your friend goes into this confusing, slightly long-winded story about this girl at work who is a complete b-word, you suddenly know exactly what to say. One minute you’re sitting across the table, sipping your striped straw like a civilized woman, and the next you’re across the table, giving advice and snuggling on her shoulder like a little pet monkey. You just want to love and be snuggled.

Your friend’s boyfriend comes home, laughs and shakes his head at you. I’m twenty-two, you rationalize. I’m completely fine. You don’t work for at least…seven hours, so there’s time to sober up, right? You have nowhere to go or be right now, you can just…relax. Weird, you forgot what that feels like.

You pour yourself another glass, and your two friends do the same. You snack on cashews and look out the upstairs window to the quiet street. The rest of the world is tucked away in their little beds. They’re missing out.

You talk about everything and anything on your mind, from what you’re eating for lunch tomorrow to your late grandfather. You take slow sips, feeling your ears warm and the carbonation bubble up in your stomach. And you stop worrying about things you can’t control and live, just for a brief slice of time, in the moment.

It’s freeing, getting drunk on a Monday. One of those spontaneous, semi-reckless, but absolutely necessary decisions. Sometimes in life you just have to pull out the mason jars, the bottle of vodka, and the matching striped straws. Sometimes you just have to take a second and throw some drinks back—for your sanity, for your social life, and for your happiness.

Sometimes there’s nothing better on a Monday night than acting like a little kid, laughing about nothing, wrapping your arms around your girlfriends, and sipping on grown-up root beers way past your bedtime.