It all started well. Hours before the game actually began, we wandered the streets of the French Quarter, pulling colt-colored (blue) beads off passers-by and instigating a "Peyton on the Ground" dance party on Royal St. that drew a significant crowd (it was big enough to make it onto YouTube, anyway). I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, but I was only a couple of drinks deep, and I felt fine. No, I felt great.
I made it through the first half, no problem, but somewhere between the two-minute warning and the end of halftime, it hit me. I remember feeling sleepy, and a little later, I remember finding myself seated on the bar's bathroom floor, head in hands, trying to get the world to stop spinning for just a second. I couldn't miss this. I couldn't miss this.
But the bar wouldn't let me stay there, and I ended up being driven to a friend's house to sleep it off. A lot of that night is hazy, but I clearly remember my friend shouting, "They won! They won!" as she helped me into the bed, the small TV in her room blurrily showing me for a second the confetti falling on the field. And I remember that at that moment, I wanted so badly to go back to that afternoon. I wanted so badly to wake up from that irreparable nightmare. Sixty-seven years of losing, and the year we finally make it to the Superbowl, I couldn't manage to stay conscious long enough to enjoy the win. And now, all I could do to dull the pain was fall asleep again.
When I finally woke up, hours later, I cried. I cried in the bed. I cried in the bathroom. I cried in the living room, in front of relatively new friends I didn't even know that well. They kept trying to tell me I should be happy; we won, after all. Plus, they reassured me, it happens to everyone; everyone drinks a little too much at one point or another. But did it have to be that night? I begged. Did it have to happen then? Did it have to keep me from seeing the most important game in Saints history? I cried when I woke up again the next day, and I cried when I finally watched the second half on DVR at my parents house that afternoon. These were no tears of joy. Regret filled every salty drop as it streamed down my face.
The newspaper was filled with Saints stories for weeks before and after that fateful Sunday. I kept most of them, even though they just made it more painfully obvious that I had lost a once-in-a-lifetime moment and would never get it back. I have held on to these papers for more than a year now, I think in the hopes that someday I would be able to show them to my children as proof that it really did happen. That someday, I would be able to look back on it with joy. With no regret.
But today is not that day. Today, I find my tears once again hitting these dusty old pages, wishing that things could have been different. Going over and over the events of the day, picking out every little thing I could have changed that would have kept me in that bar, kept me in that game, kept me from missing pigs fly and hell freeze over. No, today is the day I admit to myself that I won't ever get that day back. Today, I let myself feel for the last time the weight of those inked pages and the memories they hold that I never had. Today, I start forgiving myself. Today, I try to move on.
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