Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

Sobriety has a way of sorting out your friendships. They begin to fall into two categories: people you feel comfortable being yourself with—and everyone else.

the person who wanted to play but could not bear to play. To want the microphone but to stand in the back. To know there is a book in you but to never find the nerve to wrestle it out. I was so screwed up on the issue of performance. It’s like I didn’t want anyone to hear me, but I couldn’t shut up. Or rather, I wanted everyone to hear me, but only

fearing another person’s opinion never stops them from having one. And my focus on external judgment kept me from noticing the endless ways I’d judged myself.

I wanted to fast-forward through this dull segment. I want to skip to the part when I was no longer broken and busted

What’s the difference between a person who’s unfulfilled and a person who’s impossible to please?

I did not. My writing was a kind of literary karaoke. I aped the formulas and phrasings of older critics whose work I admired.

But I kept longing for a secret conversation, away from the pitchforks of the Internet, about how hard it was to match the clarity of political talking points to the complexity of life lived at last call.

I had broken blood vessels around my eyes from vomiting in the morning.

Addiction was the inverse of honest work. It was everything, right now. I drank away nervousness, and I drank away boredom, and I needed to build a new tolerance. Yes to discomfort, yes to frustration, yes to failure, because it meant I was getting stronger. I refused to be the person who only played games she could win.