I used to LOVE going out for a night on the town. At 3pm every Saturday afternoon I would get a buzz of nervous excitement: Where will I go…? What will I wear…? Who will I meet (read: pash on the DF)…?
Flick my hurr back and forth, I would.
I’d put on a pair of killer heels, curl my hair and slip on my party dress. A good night was characterised by a 3am finish (gotta get home before cab changeover time), blisters on my heels (from all the carving up of the DF), and maybe a new phone number (nothing like meeting guys in a pitch-black room).
And a hangover the next morning?! What hangover? I just slept until 1pm, ate some junk and was all good, duh.
I’d scoff when haters people suggested that I might “grow out” of wanting to go out – what else would one do with their Friday and Saturday evenings if they weren’t hitting up the hottest new bars?! Never, I’d cry.
And then this happened…
One weekend, not so long ago, I was at one of my usual inner city haunts and suddenly had the overwhelming feeling of NEEDING to go home to bed. It wasn’t a particularly bad night, I was just…tired. And a bit hungry. And aware that I had brunch plans the next morning. And my feet hurt a little. So did my back – too much standing up.
It was only 11pm. Maybe I was getting ill?!
I thought it was a one-off. A weird night. Oh no, the same thing happened the following weekend at a friend’s house party, which would once have been an all-night event: I decided to take myself off to bed at the stroke of midnight.
The next morning, sans hangover, it struck me: I was sick of going out. Over it. Worn out. Done.
How did this happen?!
After a few relatively low-key weekends in a row, things really snowballed and I started to notice a whole heap of signs indicative of the fact that I’m just getting too old for that shit. Feel that you might be in a similar boat? If you find yourself nodding along with any of the below, welcome to the club (but not that kind) my friend.
1. The thought of being out past 12am makes me feel incredibly anxious.
Now that I’ve embraced a life of 11pm finishes and early Sunday rises, late nights truly unnerve me. From 11.30pm onwards I start to fixate on the number of hours sleep I’ll get (or lose), I obsess about all the things I won’t be able to do the next day if I get home too late, and I get an overwhelming feeling that I MUST get to bed post-haste. Not even FOMO can get me to stay.
Top Comments
This quote from Grampa Simpson sums up my early 30s state of mind:
"I used to be with it, but then they changed what *it* was. Now what I'm with isn't *it*, and what's *it* seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you..."
I agree with this so much it's uncanny. I thought it was just me that felt this way. I had one tiny taste of vodka last night and literally vomited it all up THREE hours later. Pathetic ? Yes. But that's ok by me. I'm over that partying I think I may be a fully fledged adult and you know what ? I love being a grown up wearing my pjs at 8pm in a Saturday night watching movies on Foxtel while others are out at clubs dancing and drinking and preparing for a hang over