lover, you should've come over

Fear grips my heart like a vice. Just as another equally powerful vice cranks down on my temples. Jesus, this shit happens way too often anymore. It seems like what used to happen once a month, twice if I was feeling frisky now sneaks up on me much too much as of late. I, of course, am referring to the hangover.

To use the term "hangover" is an understatement to the tune of the holocaust. Your average, run of the mill, soccer mom drank too much wine while watching must see TV, hangover is like saying that the holocaust never happened. While my benders and binges, on the other hand, would be the full blown apocalyptic onslaught of fire and brimstone that was the calculated destruction of millions of the european Jewry.

Ok, maybe that was a bit over the top, but it certainly feels like a slaughter. The problem is that the headache really pales in comparison with the fear. The headache is nothing. Bad music can give me a headache and everyone knows there is plenty of that to go around. The fear is the thing. I know that I blacked out and I know there could be dead bodies laying somewhere, just waiting for this week's team of crime scene investigators to bust up my hazy facade and cart me off to serve my life imprisonment.

God knows I deserve it. To be honest, I probably only have dumb luck or divine intervention to thank for my continued existence as a free man. But the fear, that's truly how I'm punished for living my life as a lord of debauchery.

Similar to the feeling you get when you've held your breath too long, the very blood in my veins seems to drop a few degrees. This otherworldly fear only fuels the fire, the anxiety. The anxiety coupled with the haze of a night of heavy drinking. Like a wedding in hell, I see to be married to this recurring tragedy. Shakespeare couldn't have made a finer plot twist, I can't move a muscle and yet that is the only thing on my mind. I must get out of there. Wherever there may be.

If there was a wedding in hell, the fear would be the wedding cake. The centerpiece of the hangover. And like any good cake, this one has layers, and maybe even some side dishes of wedding cake accoutrements. Some of these hellish delicacies include the aforementioned blood as it freezes inside of me. But while the blood cools my body to the point of pain, my lungs burn. Because of course I smoked too much last night. Normal people smoke too much at half a pack, maybe a whole pack. I can easily cut through three or four packs of cigarettes on one of my weekly benders.

Waking up, with a dry mouth and burning lungs, a sore throat and the fear. The fear is the killer. Waking up on a sugar high from this satanic cake is becoming far too frequent of an adventure as of late. Far too frequent.