The phrase, “No one ever looks back on their life + remembers the nights they slept” has been coined by enablers – in either their late teens or early 20’s – as an intense persuasive technique to put your responsibilities, ambitions, and deadlines in the recycling bin, for a couple hours (days), so you can go out and get pissed. Fuck the rules and fuck your 9 am lecture, how dare you want to stay in and conduct in-depth research into the First Dynasty of Egypt! Come out instead, have five double vodka oranges, be sick on the club dance floor and gobble a ham and pineapple pizza at 6am. Repeat weekly.
Ha. Ha. Ha. No.
Look, if you are a blackout artist like I then contrary to popular belief, you will probably remember more of the nights you sat up reading a gripping novel in the bath with a glass of white wine than you will after having five while simultaneously dancing on tables during a night out.
Yeah, you might fondly reminisce about the time you were young, naive and sixteen, having your first cider at a beach party and giving a male companion – who had firmly attached himself to you all bloody night – a blowjob in a cornfield. And I mean, sister, we have all been there, but my first blundering sexual encounters on nights I did not get enough sleep are definitely not things I care to remember. Ever, ever.
Shagging, spewing, crying and dreadful dad dancing are sporadically – and sometimes, unfortunately – weaved into the fabrication of my being. The majority of these memories definitely occur on nights that I did not have enough sleep. I cannot lie to you, they are mainly all fantastically funny, but, what about the images and nostalgic feelings I have firmly attached to moments that happened when you did have enough sleep?
Impromptu carbonara dates in my hometown with my OG girl gang and one of us (*kate) religiously drinking gallons of apple juice. Driving to McDonald’s and my best friend forgetting how to swerve a cyclist (a you-had-to-be-there-moment, right, girls?), laughing until Ribena spurts out my nose watching television with my mom and jumping on the back of a quad, racing through Fords and shouting at the top of my lungs on summer evenings. Even entering the world of Harry Potter for the first time and having feasts in my bedroom while I binge Sex and The City all have firm places in my heart. I remember all of those nights, and I definitely got more than enough sleep. So phrase? DO YOU LIKE ME NOW.
So what I am trying to say is just do not bow to peer pressure. If you want to stay in and research the First Egyptian Dynasty instead of going out then I implore you to do so. Fuck the phrase “no one ever remembers the nights they slept ”. Honey, go out and get wasted and feel triumphant in the morning because you want to, not because some BS phrase is telling you too.
ELLA LOUISE SCOTT 