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I never throw up when I’m hungover, but I have leaned over a trash can wishing that I could. The defining point of the few times I’ve experienced a hangover was the feeling that I’d like to throw myself up. I like the term “wasted” to describe drunkenness – only not as an adjective, but a past-tense verb. Speaking only for myself, if I’ve had enough to drink that I’m sick the next morning, then I have wasted something precious. At the least, it was the previous evening, because I did not spend it doing something honorable. I never just waste time, either. Most likely, I also wasted some money, pride, respect, purity, character, friendship, and what I can best describe as right standing with God. The shame and self-hatred that come with the headache and unsettled stomach are appropriate based on the truth that I wasted.

I consider this life stage a period of reconciliation for me. I’m trying to stare the expectations of my culture, my perfectionism, my parents, and my Savior in the face and decide what my actual standards should be. And I’m at least a little bit angry that in the meantime, I have to keep living my life, every day. For example, I haven’t completed my personal theology of alcohol or of twentysomething men and yet I find myself interacting with both regularly.