Sober beer pong and self-destructive tendencies

This Sunday was the 21st birthday celebration of one of my close friends. I used to live with this girl, back when Jason and I were broken up last year. We worked together at the university paper, and although she's a good 2 years younger than I am, we bonded one night over a game of beer pong and were inseparable for about the next 8 months.

I moved in with her last fall. I was still living with my parents, and she had a huge, paid-for house to herself with an extra room. I was there most of the time anyway, only stumbling "home" to change out of my clothes from the night before so I didn't smell like alcohol and smoke when I showed up to class.

We spent every night (or, afternoon) sitting on her back patio, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, talking and wondering what crazy shenanigans we'd be getting into that night. And a night rarely passed without some sort of drunken shenanigans, even if it was just the two of us sitting on that back patio until the wee hours of the morning.

And this, sprinkled with our time together at work--at which I was her boss, professional, I know--was our friendship. Beer, cigarettes, and shenanigans. Not that that somehow makes it any less of a friendship. In those months I lived with her, she became my closest friend. I told her everything, things I had a hard time telling my oldest friends. I thought I had finally-finally-formed a lasting bond with someone outside of my high school circle.

But then Jason and I got back together. I moved out to move in with him (and because I had graduated, she had not, and I had to make way for life and work). I watched our friendship morph and change, as I have with so many of my relationships over the years and even more fiercely the past few months.

I still saw her frequently after I moved out. I went over at least once a week, and we made the way to the back patio, beer in hand, and caught up over smoke rings.

Since finding out I'm pregnant, I've gone to her house twice.

I never know quite what to do with myself. We still go to that back patio out of habit, but I don't smoke. She doesn't either, out of politeness. We don't drink. We just... kind of... sit. And then I go home.

I've heard from her less and less since the big fat positive.

For her 21st birthday, I didn't know what to expect. We had grandiose plans for this night, and none of them included my being sober or knocked up. I knew only that I had to go, because she made that abundantly clear. I wouldn't want a pregnant woman at my 21st birthday. But when I asked her what she wanted, she said only "for you to be there."

The whole party brought back so many memories of my old self and how many things have suddenly changed (for good and for arguably bad). I had already gravitated away from that life. Jason and I already both worked full-time jobs and had lost the time to spend a weekend hungover. But it never felt permanent. The possibility of a wild, crazy night always seemed just around the corner. Now it's not there. It'll probably never be there again. Yes, I will have nights to myself again in life, but will I want to wake up and have to piece together the night before while I have a child waiting at home? Probably (I hope) not.

Any remnants of my self-destructive tendencies will have to be ignored. Forever. I cannot smoke now, lung-cancer be damned, because it's no longer just about the "self" in self-destructive. Same with drinking. Same with experimenting with anything, ever. I will be a better mom than that.

So I went to the 21st birthday party, even though I was ready to just crawl in bed. It didn't even start until 9 AT NIGHT. That's usually when I'm waking up for work. I was cranky, and immediately after getting there, I felt like a fish out of water. Surrounded by old friends from college, all drinking, all smoking on that back patio.

I played a game of sober beer pong, for God's sakes. And I still sucked as badly as ever.

I hope that particular friendship doesn't irrevocably change. I hope I can, once again, sit and drink a beer with her. In about a year.

But I find my phone ringing less and less these days, and when friends do call, it's the friends I've had forever, before we knew what it even really felt like to be drunk (and the ones by my side during my first forays into deviance).