Oh boy. It's noon, November first, and you're just waking up to the blinding light of the outside world which is coming in through the window your roommate likes to keep open. As you lay in bed postponing the inevitable start of your day, your thoughts drift to last night, which for the current moment is a blur of candy wrappers, too many people in fishnet tights, and for all you readers of legal age, shot glasses.

Okay, so you know for sure you wore that really original, amazing costume that you'd been planning for a month because it's sitting there at the foot of your bed, discarded at 4 AM last night in favor of cozy pajamas.

You definitely remember starting the night off in your dorm room, getting ready with your roommates as you finalized you agenda for the evening. What did you decide on again? That house party uptown? The club with a $20 entrance fee? Did someone really suggest sneaking into an apartment building and joining the child residents in trick-or-treating? As if full grown adults wouldn't recognize a bunch of 20-somethings parading door to door, towering over 4 foot tall princesses and pirates. Give me a break. There's at least one activity you can definitively cross off your list.

So you know you weren't trick-or-treating (even though you kind of wish you had been) but you're still not really clear on what exactly you were doing. Things come back in bits and pieces: loud music, decorations that are meant to be scary but are actually just cheesy. Did you make-out with a jack-o-lantern?!? Oh my god, what happened last night?

The sudden movement of you reaching over to unplug your phone from its charger and look for evidence of last night's festivities triggers something inside of you, and suddenly the pounding that has been unobtrusively resonating inside your head is a full-blown marching band. I'm talking trumpet-blasting, drum-rolling, celebrating-your-high-school-football-team's-homecoming-victory marching band.

Didn't anyone force you to drink water before bed last night? Or at all for that matter??

You sit up. Aaaaaaaand there's the stomachache you anticipated. Great - you can't even tell what's making it worse: the sugar crash or the hangover. This once a year combo, unique to Halloween, is one you always promise to never revisit... and always curse yourself for revisiting the following year.

You flop back down into your blankets in defeat and open your Snapchat. Who is this random person with the orange-painted face in your story? Where are you friends? At the very (ABSOLUTE) least, you are grateful to know it was a human, and not an old, dirty pumpkin you kissed in your sugar-induced haze.

Okay, here we go, you've finally stumbled upon the hundreds of snaps of you singing karaoke with your squad - but wait, is that the Monster Mash? Throwback to elementary school music class. Let's delete that really quick before anyone else needs to be subjected to the screech of your booze-coated voice.

You put your phone facedown - this is too much to take in all at once. As you get out of bed to drink the biggest cup of coffee you can find, you turn the TV on for some background noise. Suddenly you hear it: "DON"T MISS OUR PRE-PRE-BLACK FRIDAY SALE!!! THE GIFTS YOU LOVE FOR THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE AT THE PRICES YOU LOVE!!!" and you are knocked on your back by the realization that it has begun. The holiday season that encompasses everything from Thanksgiving to New Year's has arrived, and peak prep-time is rapidly approaching.

This thought is too much to bear in your current still-a-little-buzzed, head-throbbing, sugar-and-sleep-deprived state. You chug your coffee black, allowing it to burn away the painful half-memories of last night and the sense of impeding doom that is rising in your stomach.

I, on the other hand, stayed in this Halloween. I'm no fool - the Halloween Hangover will not take me as its victim this year. Not again.