Step 1 – Get off from work at 6 pm in the evening absolutely famished – for a drink with your best friends, after dealing with rude and entitled customers all day. Fuelled with the fury of a thousand suns and determined to have a good time, you make your way to your mate’s place to pregame. You’re such a big girl now!

Step 2 – Drink as many blue raspberry Cruisers you can possibly shove down your gullet while sitting in the backseat of your friend’s dad’s car; a red Ford Ranger. Then, looking at a street of empty kerbs, quietly realise you arrived at your destination far too early as you wait outside a dishevelled, barely standing student flat in your best shoes, ever so slightly buzzed. So grown up.

Step 3 – Finally start to ‘party’. The carpet is sticky and, by proxy, so are you. Awkwardly lean against a wall with sharpie marks, unusually-shaped holes, and a magic touch of the landlord special, as you slowly become deserted by your only pal at the function. Drinking yourself through a conversation with a guy as he attempts to flirt by mansplaining about his newest discovery, socialism. “Ever heard of Karl Marx?”, he spits. Drake is crooning in the background. A truly harrowing experience.

Step 4 – Shitfaced, you begin to people-watch, and notice a familiar face on the verge of tears rush towards the bathroom. You vow to yourself that you’ll never be that girl. But you will. Inevitably. Somehow, you end up sitting on bitingly cold tiles, next to the girl whose guts you used to hate with all your might. Yet, you are now no longer blinded by your former teen angst. You straighten her septum ring as she pours her heart out to you, in a drunken haze, and it’s not as weird as it should be. It feels quite beautiful in a vulnerable way actually. You almost forget about the unhealthy co-dependent friendship you both went through together as you walk out to re-join the party, pinky to pinky.

Step 5 – Wake up the next morning with mysterious bruises on your legs, wondering how you earnt these new, precious purple badges of honour, and how the fuck you got home from the night before. With a pounding headache, you make an oath to never take another glance at a bottle of vodka ever again, while scanning items at the counter. On your meal break, you get a text, “hey what r u doing this weekend? xx”.