Stages Of Realizing You're Maybe Too Old To Party

Sigh. I'm tired. Well, you know, I'm not THAT tired, but I'm definitely too tired to stay out past midnight. 1AM tops. If somehow I manage to make it to 3AM, you better not talk to me for at least two days afterwards. And I'm a girl who used to party until 10AM. Let that sink in for a second. And it's not always that I'm "too tired" anymore. It's that I don't want to party like I used to. Because as I always say, once you've been to one party, you've been to every party. It's like going to pretty churches as a tourist when you're backpacking around Europe. You're not going to find some new, more amazing kind of church at the thousandth church. It's probably going to be very much exactly like the first one you went to, give or take a stained glass window.

Letting go of the party, especially for someone who finds it not only fun but habitual, is a process—especially in accepting that you're actually a little bit too old to be maintaining a party lifestyle. It's sort of like what I imagine menopause to be like, but with fewer hot flashes and more FOMO. Here are the stages you go through in order to realize you're maybe too old to party like you used to (and you don't really want to anyway):

1. Ignorance

At first, you don't even notice that anything is amiss. You put your party pants on as usual.

2. Boredom

When you go out to party, you look around and everything feels really banal.

3. Impatience

You "literally cannot even" with people's coke-fueled, punch-line free, never-ending diatribes about their lives.

4. Annoyance

Boredom and impatience will coalesce to make you feel super annoyed.

5. Isolation

By and by, in a room full of people, many of them hugging you, talking your ear off, or trying to get you into bed, you'll feel completely alone.

6. Shots

Shaking yourself out of it, you'll convince yourself you can get back in the game. By drinking irresponsibly, of course.

7. Misunderstanding

And then someone goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid like "on fleek". You won't know what it means, and realize you are, in fact, getting too old for this shit.

8. More shots

It worked the first time so...

9. Trying to buy a cigarette

When you're drunk from shots and so sick of everyone and everything you could gouge your own eyes out, going outside to scab a cigarette and maybe make a new friend will seem like a good idea, until said cigarette makes you feel sick and your new friend is the worst.

10. Being too drunk

Tipped over the edge by that ill-advised cigarette, the room will start to spin and your tummy will croak.

11. Taking yourself home

Around 1AM, you'll slip out unnoticed, put yourself in a cab, and take your old ass to bed.

12. Waking up with a headache

When you wake up in the morning, you won't be like a spritely 20-year-old ready to rush out to Bloody Marys and brunch, but aching entirely.

13. Wishful thinking

You'll lay in bed wishing you could get up, enjoy your day, maybe go for a bike ride, do some gardening...but alas.

14. Regret

After spending the day feeling sorry for yourself, sitting in the dark watching Netflix and ordering Seamless, you'll truly begin to regret the night before. It was just not worth the aftermath.

15. Acceptance

Partying hard is a young person's game. You'll take getting white wine drunk in the afternoon and falling asleep at 9PM any day over trying to rage like it's 1999.

Images: BCDF Pictures; Giphy(8)