Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

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BEGINNING The closet in my Manhattan studio was just big enough to climb inside. I had to rearrange boxes and bags of old clothes, but if I cleared the ground like brush and squished my sleeping bag underneath me like a giant pillow, I could curl up in a ball compact enough to shut the closet door. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out. All those years I spent on the bed as the sun stabbed me through the blinds. Seeking cover under blankets and pillows, wearing silky blue eye masks like I was some ’60s movie heroine. All those mornings I felt so exposed, but five feet away was a closet offering a feeling of total safety. My very own panic room. I needed protection, because I had such turtle skin in those days. I knew quitting drinking would mean giving up the euphoria of the cork eased out of the bottle at 6 pm. What I did not expect is that I would feel so raw and threatened by the world. The clang and shove of strangers on the streets outside. The liquor stores lurking on every corner. But you’d be surprised how manageable life feels when it has been reduced to a two-by-five-foot box. Notice how the body folds in on itself. Listen to the smooth stream of breath. Focus on the bathunk of the heart. That involuntary metronome. That low, stubborn drumbeat. Isn’t it weird how it keeps going, even when you tell it to stop? Sobriety wasn’t supposed to be like this. I thought when I finally quit drinking for good, the universe would open its treasure chest for me. That only seemed fair, right? I would sacrifice the greatest, most important relationship of my existence—here I am, universe, sinking a knife into my true love’s chest for you—and I would be rewarded with mountains of shimmering, clinking gold to grab by the fistful. I would be kicking down doors again. In badass superhero mode. Instead, I woke up at 5 am each day, chest hammering with anxiety, and crawled into the closet for a few hours to shut out unpleasant voices. When will I screw this up again? What failures lurk beyond these four walls? I trudged through the day with shoulders slumped, every color flipped to gray scale. I spent evenings on my bed, arm draped over my face. Hangover posture. I didn’t like the lights on. I didn’t even like TV. It was almost as if, in absence of drinking blackouts, I was forced to create my own. I had a few sources of comfort. I liked my cat. I liked food. I scarfed down ice cream, which was weird, because when I was drinking, I hated sweets. “I’ll drink my dessert,” I used to say, because sugar messed with my high. But now I devoured a pint of Häagen-Dazs in one sitting, and I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt, because people quitting the thing they love get to eat whatever the fuck they want. I built a bridge to midnight with peanut butter and chocolate. Four-cheese macaroni and tins of lasagna. Chicken tikka masala with extra naan, delivered in bags containing two forks. And if I made it to midnight, I won. Another day on the books: five, seven, eleven days down. Then I’d wake up at 5 am and start this bullshit all over again. Back in my 20s—in that wandering place of travel and existential searching that unfolded between newspaper jobs—I briefly worked at a foster home for children with catastrophic illnesses. One of the babies did not have a brain, a fate I didn’t even know was possible. He had a brain stem but not a
ain, which allowed his body to develop even as his consciousness never did. And I would think about that baby when I climbed in the closet, because when you took off his clothes to change his diaper or bathe him he screamed and screamed, his tiny pink tongue darting about. Such simple, everyday transitions, but not to him. When you moved him, he lost all sense of where he was in the world. “It’s like you’ve plunged him into an abyss,” the nurse told me once as she wrapped him like a burrito. “That’s why you swaddle him tight. It grounds him.” She picked him back up again, and he was quiet and docile. The demons had scattered. And that’s what the closet felt like to me. Without it, I was flailing in the void. Not taking a drink was easy. Just a matter of muscle movement, the simple refusal to put alcohol to my lips. The impossible part was everything else. How could I talk to people? Who would I be? What would intimacy look like, if it weren’t coaxed out by the glug-glug of a bottle of wine or a pint of beer? Would I have to join AA? Become one of those frightening 12-step people? How the fuck could I write? My livelihood, my identity, my purpose, my light—all extinguished with the tightening of a screw cap. And yet. Life with booze had pushed me into that tight corner of dread and fear. So I curled up inside the closet, because it felt like being held. I liked the way the door smooshed up against my nose. I liked how the voices in my mind stopped chattering the moment the doorknob clicked. It was tempting to stay in there forever. To run out the clock while I lay there thinking about how unfair, and how terrible, and why me. But I knew one day, I would have to open the door. I would have to answer the only question that really matters to the woman who has found herself in the ditch of her own life. How do I get out of here?
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Begin Reading Table of Contents New
Page 5 and 6:
PRELUDE
Page 7 and 8:
The guy isn’t bad-looking. Slight
Page 9 and 10:
WOMEN WHO DRINK I was 33, and lying
Page 11 and 12:
she did not get—but I’ve never
Page 13 and 14:
In my 20s, friends called with that
Page 15 and 16:
I discussed roofies with Aaron Whit
Page 17 and 18:
a while, a columnist would come alo
Page 19 and 20:
ONE
Page 21 and 22:
when no one was looking, and I woul
Page 23 and 24:
steps, not talking. As much as my f
Page 25 and 26:
Our home was on a major artery thro
Page 27 and 28:
She’d transformed, like Olivia Ne
Page 29 and 30: I threw up seven times. Hunched ove
Page 31 and 32: STARVED One of the curious aspects
Page 33 and 34: more successful her eating disorder
Page 35 and 36: orrowed. She couldn’t miss the si
Page 37 and 38: To make it more confounding, Miles
Page 39 and 40: efused to be won. I drank cup after
Page 41 and 42: DRESSING IN MEN’S CLOTHES I start
Page 43 and 44: coffee. But that seemed like a very
Page 45 and 46: you to imperil our amazing friendsh
Page 47 and 48: I FINALLY GOT a boyfriend near the
Page 49 and 50: FOUR
Page 51 and 52: The production guy passed my desk a
Page 53 and 54: drank myself to the place where I w
Page 55 and 56: ehind me, and told him I was moving
Page 57 and 58: my Harp as soon I walked in the doo
Page 59 and 60: FIVE
Page 61 and 62: “Your key, mademoiselle,” said
Page 63 and 64: My friend Meredith lived in an apar
Page 65 and 66: “This was fun,” I said. He was
Page 67 and 68: OF COURSE. OF course I’d gone to
Page 69 and 70: like you should not be crying,” h
Page 71 and 72: SIX
Page 73 and 74: When the bottle was drained, I’d
Page 75 and 76: But no, really, I had it this time.
Page 77 and 78: off a gargantuan diamond. I thought
Page 79: INTERLUDE
Page 83 and 84: SEVEN
Page 85 and 86: But his once-sallow cheeks were ros
Page 87 and 88: announcing their baby. Nobody wants
Page 89 and 90: want to remain silent and unknowabl
Page 91 and 92: Bubba curled up alongside me when I
Page 93 and 94: EIGHT
Page 95 and 96: for me? My friends didn’t necessa
Page 97 and 98: ecause otherwise you have to go int
Page 99 and 100: said, and she was right. The next w
Page 101 and 102: fill-in-the-blank letter of apology
Page 103 and 104: NINE
Page 105 and 106: the tastes of a frat boy, or a grum
Page 107 and 108: Mine was a recipe for unhappiness.
Page 109 and 110: He tugged too hard, then I tugged t
Page 111 and 112: SEX My first date in sobriety was w
Page 113 and 114: 30s to stare down a personal profil
Page 115 and 116: and said, “Look, I dressed up for
Page 117 and 118: “I’m thinking: Well, that was f
Page 119 and 120: he’s impotent or not, I don’t k
Page 121 and 122: ELEVEN
Page 123 and 124: the scorn of strangers. They skip t
Page 125 and 126: Addiction was the inverse of honest
Page 127 and 128: I worshipped alcohol, and it consum
Page 129 and 130: THIS IS THE PLACE A few months befo
Page 131 and 132:
Anna and I have had 20 years of the
Page 133 and 134:
saying in midsentence. My dad loses
Page 135 and 136:
from here, I told myself. There wil
Page 137 and 138:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR SARAH HEPOLA’S w
Page 139:
Contents COVER TITLE PAGE WELCOME D
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Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

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