ChamPAIN Problems: An Ode To The Girl Who Smokes After Yoga

ChamPAIN problems is a three-part series. This is part three. Click here to read part one and part two.

This is for the girl who puts the PAIN in chamPAIN.

It’s for the stylish, magnetic party girl teetering in her nine-inch heels, her sequin-scaled body teeming with so many dark secrets she’s terrified she’ll self-combust at any moment (and the drugs that used to brilliantly keep those pesky demons at bay just aren’t doing the job anymore).

It’s for the girl who does, for the record, go to yoga occasionally, only to light up a cigarette afterward, her scratched-up mat tucked into her scrawny bruised arms, her wild sweaty hair oh-so-casually spilling out of her effortlessly messy bun, confusing her fellow mat-mates as she blows gray rings of smoke into the city sky.

The girl who dares to show up to Sunday Morning Vinyasa Class despite her apocalyptic hangover. The girl who cries mascara tears with shamelessly shaking limbs as she desperately clutches onto the wall praying praying praying to a God she doesn’t even believe in as she twists her body into warrior one.

Warrior two.

Warrior who?

The girl who craves inner-peace as much she craves her Marlboro Lights.

The girl who is trying to better herself — but holyshit — doesn’t want to lose herself.

The girl who can’t help but unleash a wild animal of a laugh when the boy with the bun to the left of her releases a roar of a fart in the middle of a guided meditation.

I love that girl. I salute her in all her over-fragranced, under-slept, overwhelmed, under-appreciated glory.

The girl on fire who dances barefoot over that thin red line — that fragile little flame that flickers right in-between the delicate (and deadly) crossfire where Self-Destruction & Self-Improvement hold secret midnight meetings.

This for the brazen ice queen with a heart of gold.

The distressed-denim-wearing bae with the troubled past, the girl who thinks she might be gay but isn’t sure. It’s also for the girl who isn’t gay but my fucking god wishes she were gay because she hates men because of what they always do to her.

It’s for the girl who grew up too fast, the champagne-swilling trauma survivor who no one ever believed because she’s “too hot” to be your perfect victim, the girl who was called a slut in middle school because she let Jimmy and Drew feel her boobs separately in the same week. It’s for the girl who really wants to stop taking so much goddamn Adderall because she knows it’s slowly chipping away at her weathered soul but she’s afraid if she stops popping those pretty blue pills into her chapped little mouth she’ll get fat (but she’ll never admit it to you, OK? She has like REALLY bad ADHD; that’s why she takes it so much, OK?). This is for the glamorous misfit who isn’t weird enough for weirdos and isn’t basic enough for the basic bitches.

It’s for magnetic vamp who has a sky-high sex drive but hasn’t had an orgasm in months because she’s on a super-high dose of Prozac because she’s majorly depressed, but now she’s worried that the clit-killing Prozac is making her even more depressed than she was before she started taking the Prozac (ugh!).

It’s for the girl who is so terrified of confrontation that she ghosted her therapist. It’s for the girl who hacked her bangs with tiny silver cuticle scissors in the bathroom when she was drunk and upset at a party. It’s for the girl who can’t pay her rent but recently dropped two G’s on a pink quilted buttery leather Chanel bag.

This is an to the girl who has loads and loads of sex because she’s sexy as fuck and radiates a palpable sexual aura but pretends she isn’t secretly ashamed of how many people she’s slept with because she’s like, so sex-positive and such a modern feminist then gets even more ashamed for feeling so deeply ashamed and so slutty.

It’s for the fabulously-flawed, gorgeously-complex, totally-disruptive, fierce-force of-girl-nature who wants to feel a semblance of calm without losing her beautiful restlessness. The girl who over-wings her liquid eyeliner when she’s anxious (which is 99% of the time). The girl who lays awake all night worrying about the GMOS in processed food but last weekend got super wasted and snorted four rails of toxic white powder up her nostrils without even blinking her mascara-slicked eyelashes.

This is for the girl with the black-as-night-eyeliner and messy platinum hair and shiny bare legs that gleam in the strobe light. The starry-eyed messy beauty always clinking glasses with the coolest bitches at the coolest tables in the coolest clubs. Sometimes you catch her smoking a cigarette outside when you’re leaving the party, her eyes twinkling in the moonlight, her body haphazardly draped in a fabulous pink faux fur jacket and you wonder how does this girl have so much energy?

She burns so bright she doesn’t even seem real.

Have you ever seen that pretty little head of bubbles the morning after a bender?

If you did, you would look into her bloodshot eyes and wonder who (or what) snuffed out her light. You would notice the tremble in her hands. The shame wrapping itself around her body like a python. The makeup stains on her pillowcase. As a mascara tear slowly rolled down her cheek, you would wonder, what the hell was wrong with her? What on earth could this party girl be crying about? 

She’s crying because her purse is missing. She’s crying because doesn’t remember getting home. She has an unshakable feeling something really, really bad happened last night but she’s not sure what it is because she blacked out.

Again.

She’s crying because the cocktails and the prescription pills and the designer shoes and the vapid friendships and the meaningless sex aren’t anesthetizing the pain anymore. 

ChamPAIN Girl, I see you and I am you.

I, too, am a guarded, sensitive, medicated, fashion-crazed girl entity with mascara flakes falling like little black snowflakes into my champagne flute, a slew of strange tattoos peppered across my body and a tattered designer bag haphazardly hanging off my sloping shoulder. I’m the girl on her hands and knees desperately searching for her missing cell phone at the fancy restaurant on a Saturday night.

Here’s the little secret about ChamPAIN Girls. We come in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, financial and cultural backgrounds, but we’re all searching for the same thing: an escape. Because where there is a desperate longing for an endless buzz; there are painful memories screaming to be muted. Where there are bird-boned girls passed out on the couches of loud, salacious parties; there are top-secret eating disorders hidden between the gaps of thighs. Where there are pale blue Adderall pills clanking around massive totes bags; there is misunderstood creative genius and an all-consuming fear of not being enough.

Where there is a party girl, there is an actual girl, a fiery, electric, amazing, fierce-force of a girl running with all of her might far away from the razor-sharp sting of reality, her legs moving so quickly into the night if you blink you’ll miss her entirely. 

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Like what you read? Check out my other projects:

My debut book GIRL, STOP PASSING OUT IN YOUR MAKEUP: THE BAD GIRL’S GUIDE TO GETTING YOUR SH*T TOGETHER is available NOW on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, AUDIBLE, and BAM! If you send me a screenshot of your order, I’ll send you swag!

Also have you checked out my new podcast with Dayna Troisi: GirlZ, InterrupteD? It’s available on all podcast platforms and it’s lit as fuck — I swear to Lana Del Rey.

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