The Illusion of Celebration

Oh yeah. Bleached hair. Fake tan. Next to nothing on. Party Pose. I was haaawwwt. Naawwwt.

“I work my ass off by (insert excuse here: working 50 hours a week, eating my greens, running 10km on a Saturday morning), I deserve a big night on the piss.’

I don’t know about you, but I was the Queen of this theory, and this celebratory illusion had me hook, line and sinker. If we get really honest with ourselves, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. All logic is cast aside, simply so we can locate and leverage any miniscule excuse to hit the town or polish off a bottle or two. And we are so very, very pro at finding these excuses.

Can I be honest? I didn’t go out on the weekend (oh let’s face it- school nights too!) as a reward for being ‘good’ all week. I worked out, ate my greens and took my vitamins so I could feel better about my bingeing.

Upon standing face-to-face with this harsh, transparent and ridiculous reality, let’s just put our feet on the brakes, and digest that. Really. Just for a second, for the purpose of this exercise, let’s let go of the amount of kilometres we can run, the volume of the music that’s blasting in our head phones, the number of squats we can do. The high protein diet, the the calorie counting, the house music that’s still thumping in our mind hours after we’ve stumbled through the door. The red wine headache that’s pinching at our psyche…

There is just so much noise. Let’s just breathe.

When we allow all the noise to melt away, we’re left with a young woman (you, me) who perhaps doesn’t quite recognise herself anymore. And even though she can identify what she wants, she’s unsure of what she needs anymore. And even if she’s totally aware of what she needs, she’s terrified at the climb ahead of her. The gap between here and there? It’s too great. There’s too much hard work ahead.

We’re left with a girl who- more than likely- can’t remember what it feels like to be turned on when she’s clear.

We’re women.

We want to feel good.

We want to look good.

We want to like what we see in the mirror.

We crave these basic human needs so badly, that as though we’ve been put under an insidious spell, we start to believe in the hallucination that projects this false truth: if I’m a Party Girl, I’m more interesting, more mysterious. I’m better. It’s an easy falsity to believe, particularly in the early stages of your Party Girl career, but as you know by now, that feel-good-feeling is fleeting at best and elusive at worst.

And trust me gorgeous, I know all too well that those fear-based projections had a grip on you. They’d tell you- ‘The hangover/come down was awful, but it’s worth it.’ Well, that belief is null and void now, because you’re here. You’re in this space, seeking something more…