It was 3 a.m. and I was walking down a pristine, litter-free street in Chapel Hill with a Santa’s hat on, strange substances coding my blood, the scent of an older woman upon me like sweat and the fear of passing out in the street, a distinct reality if I didn’t find a bed soon.

I had had a bad week. There was something different, something that had not really been there before. I wanted to escape from Guilford because of a run in with an eccentric woman from my past that I never wished to hear from again.

Eccentric people line my past, and they all have the one thing in common. For one reason or another, they loathe my existence.

Luckily, one of my good friends was picking me up to go to Chapel Hill for a few days to hang out around town. I needed a reprieve, so I left Guilford thinking that if I could just escape this place for a few days and take on a different identity, I could feel better.

My friend wanted to go to a few clubs and bars throughout the weekend, and see what kind of trouble we could get into.

We first elected to go to a dance club where scantily-clad women lined the walls and guys looking to score were trying to catch their attention. I forgot myself there as I danced with strangers and friends, forcing down the two dollar beer to get drunk as fast as possible.

We eventually left this den of debauchery, and stumbled over to a bar shrouded in darkness and loud jazz music.

That is when I met this woman. She wore a short, skin tight red dress. It was her birthday, and there was something familiar about her.  We talked for a while before I realized that we were on the same journey that night: we both wanted to forget who we were and be someone else for a little while.

She had a sad smile when she told me her age, almost like the number surprised her as she said it … 30. I told her my age, and she seemed to like that I was younger.  I noticed that she was drunk too, and kept grabbing my body, holding on to me and not wanting to let go.

She was not going to yell at me, or argue over nonsense. She just wanted a young man to pay attention to her that night.

As I walked away from the bar, I noticed how out of it she seemed to be as she waited for a cab with her girlfriend, slumped over on the sidewalk, her eyes closed, almost like she knew she had made a mistake.

I woke up the next morning regretting the substances I had put into my body the previous night.

As my friend and I drove back to Guilford, quietly reflecting on last night’s events, that woman kept flashing into my mind. The look on her face as I walked away from the bar was plastered in my skull as we pulled onto campus.

We said our goodbyes, and I told him to leave me by The Grill, where I needed to get some food to help with the hangover. But as soon as I walked in, guess who was there?  The woman that made me want to leave in the first place. But what she meant to me before had change.

Escaping who I was because of her meant that I wasn’t in control anymore, and I didn’t want that.

Enjoying the fear and the loathing of the culmination of the moment, I got in line to get some food.