ice cubes.

Another drunken New Year's, this one two years ago. I don't remember what I was drinking, some cocktail of expensive colored vodka and a soda. I was drunk. I'd been drunk before and I've been drunk since. Most times I enjoy it. But there's this line that gets crossed after so many drinks where I'm not in control anymore and then I don't like it at all. That night, I was well beyond that line, sitting on a table, a big round one with one center leg and a fat base supporting it. Abandoned drinks and party favors sat on the table with me, as did a friend of mine, also very drunk. A close encounter with the toilet was in his near future. We were just sitting there, taking it in, neither of us in much of a state to make conversation. Then I felt everything shifting in slow motion, like when you fall in a dream: you can't observe it any real way, but you know somehow that it's happening without being able to do anything to stop it. I managed to stand up before everything came down, but gravity got the best of the table and all its other occupants. Glassware and ice everywhere. Everyone shouted in surprise and then laughed jovially at us, look at dumb drunk Sandra, she flipped a table. I was so confused, about alcohol, about the mess, about gravity, about the disapproving stare my boyfriend was giving me from across the room. People swarmed around us to help right the table and clean up the mess; alcohol inspires a certain comraderie among people. Miraculously, nothing was broken, and once the glassware was picked up, people lost interest in the cleaning endeavor and went back to their memorable night in the making. Except me. There was still ice everywhere and I was still in a fog, my mind receiving so much stimuli that I was unable to understand any of it. So I got down on the floor and picked up ice cubes, one at a time, putting them in a red plastic Solo cup. There was all this...this...this crap going on and I couldn't comprehend any of it, but I could pick up ice cubes. I could focus on ice cubes, one at a time, into the red cup until the mess was gone.

And sometimes I don't even have to be drunk to feel like that, to not feel in control even enough to sort out the things I'm seeing and hearing and feeling and tasting and smelling. Then I just have to figure out a way to sit down on the floor with my red plastic Solo cup and pick up all the ice cubes, one at a time, into the red cup until the mess is gone.