Sarah Hepola Quotes & Sayings

I stayed sober for a year and a half, which is like dog years to a 25-year-old. I — Sarah Hepola

My self loathing was like a bone I couldn't stop gnawing. — Sarah Hepola

The ache of those words: Let's hear you. It put a plum in my throat to be 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 in the way I wanted to be heard, which was an impossible wish, because nobody ever followed instructions. — Sarah Hepola

I couldn't tell you much about John 3:16, but I knew Blueberry Muffin: 426. — Sarah Hepola

Another one of the line-item vetoes in the "never drink alone" rule book is that you're allowed to drink alone while traveling. Who else could possibly join you? I loved drinking alone in distant bars, staying on speaking terms with my own solitude. — Sarah Hepola

Some people are so brimful with misery they can't help splashing everyone else. — Sarah Hepola

Moving a pile of bricks from one side of the room to the other requires strength. Time, discipline, patience. — Sarah Hepola

I watched women file in, hoping each new one in a smart dress suit was a fairy godmother carrying my new fate. I'd catch her glance as she passed, hoping she'd see the star pattern in my eyes. Oh, it's you. I found you. Does every child have this fantasy - or just the sad ones? — Sarah Hepola

I understood drinking to be the gasoline of all adventure. — Sarah Hepola

I kept flashing back to an argument I used to have with my ex. Every time I vented about work, he rushed to hand-craft a solution, which was an irritating habit. All you want to do is fix me, I spat at him once. But I never thought to ask - Why do I have such a high tolerance for being broken? — Sarah Hepola

I was starting to learn one of the most important lessons of online dating: the wisdom of saying no. — Sarah Hepola

I had this great idea: I should get a job. Freelancing came with freedom, but maybe what I required was a cage. — Sarah Hepola

Self-destruction is a taste I've savored much of my life. — Sarah Hepola

After I got back to Texas, Anna sent me another letter. Her voice did not have the hop-skip this time. I read it with a thunderstorm rolling in my belly, the words of rejection leaping out as if a yellow highlighter had been dragged across them: "worried about you" "can no longer watch" "please understand" She did not demand that I quit drinking, but she told me she couldn't be the safe place for my confessions anymore. It was a love letter, the hardest kind to write, but I did not see it that way. It felt like a door slammed in my face. — Sarah Hepola

Overthinkers are the most exhausting alcoholics. — Sarah Hepola

It wasn't fair that my friends could stay at Captain Morgan's pirate ship party while I was drop-kicked into a basement with homeless people chanting the Serenity Prayer. — Sarah Hepola

But, no, really, I had it this time. One of my first Salon essays was about confronting my debt, which had gotten so out of control I had to borrow money from my parents. That was a low moment, but it came with a boost of integrity. A free tax attorney helped me calculate the amount I owed the IRS - $40,000 - and put me on a payment plan. My commitment was seven years, which made me feel like the guy in Shawshank Redemption, tunneling out of prison with a spoon. — Sarah Hepola

Roofies aren't a myth, he said, but studies suggest the fear outpaces the incidence. Turns out, "being roofied" often doesn't involve roofies at all. People just don't realize how common it is to experience a blackout. — Sarah Hepola

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. — Sarah Hepola

Sobriety sucked the biggest donkey dong in the world. — Sarah Hepola

One night in Austin, I went out to karaoke with friends, and I was so loaded I jumped onstage and wrestled the microphone from some poor guy in the middle of "Little Red Corvette." When I went to get a drink afterward, the bartender said, "I'm sorry, you've been cut off." Cut off? Why? For nailing that fucking Prince song? There — Sarah Hepola

A life is bookended by forgetting, as though memory forms the tunnel that leads into and out of a human body. — Sarah Hepola

I noticed when I stopped worrying so much about how I looked, I could lose myself more in how I felt. — Sarah Hepola

Wait: His boyfriend? He was gay? The focus on the lens sharpened, and I could see it clearly now. Of course he was gay. Everyone could see that, except the chubby little lonely heart sitting at seven o'clock, drawing sparkly rainbows on the page with her glitter crayons. I was still beating myself up when the round robin arrived to me, and I sputtered along trying to assemble some phony epiphany with strong verbs, but tears dripped down my face.
The room fell into silence as people waited for me to explain. But what could I possibly say? That I had just discovered my future husband was gay? That I was going to live the rest of my life surrounded by nothing but empty lasagna pans and an overloved cat destined to die before me?
"I'm sorry," I finally said. "I was just reminded of something very painful." And I guess that wasn't a lie. — Sarah Hepola

He nursed one beer each night. Sometimes two. He poured the beer into a glass, and I could smell the hops dancing in the air as I passed. Few scents crackle my nerve endings like beer. As gorgeous as campfire, as unmistakable as gasoline. I sidled up to him. Can I have a sip? Just one. I placed my nose in the glass, and I could feel stardust on my face. I don't know if parents still let their kids taste beer, but it wasn't uncommon at the time. The bitterness was supposed to turn us off the stuff, but that one sip lit a fuse in me that burned for decades. — Sarah Hepola

That is true strength. To want what you have, and not what someone else is holding. — Sarah Hepola

These guys were way too enabled by the false intimacy of the Internet, which allowed you to toss out come-ons you would never utter if you were staring into another person's eyes. The frightening reality of another human being, the frightening reality of our imperfect and stuttering selves. How much technology has been designed to avoid this? We're all looking for ways to be close at a distance. Alcohol bridged the gap for me, the way the Internet bridges the gap for others. But maybe everyone needs to stop trying to leap over these fucking gaps and accept how scary it is to be real and vulnerable in the world. — Sarah Hepola

One of my favorite ways to have sex was right before a blackout, when I was still there but I'd gone feral, and I could let all those low and dirty words spill out of my mouth. Do this. Do that. But now I wasn't sure if I liked sex that way because it felt good or because guys dug it when I got wild. That's what I wanted more than my own pleasure. To make myself irresistible. To blow his freaking mind. — Sarah Hepola

The blackouts were horrible. It was hideous to let those nights slide into a crack in the ground. But even scarier was to take responsibility for the mess I'd made. Even scarier was to remember your own life. — Sarah Hepola

I swear I've spent half my life hiding behind a couch and the other half wondering why no one was paying attention to me. On — Sarah Hepola

There is no good way to confront a friend who is drinking too much, although doing it when you're not drunk is a good start. Anything you say will cause pain, because a woman who is drinking too much becomes terrified other people will notice. Every time I got an email like the one Charlotte sent, I felt like I'd been trailing toilet paper from my jeans. For, like, ten years. I also burned with anger, because I didn't like the fact that my closest friends had been murmuring behind cupped hands about me, and I told myself that if they loved me, they wouldn't care about this stuff. But that's the opposite of how friendships work. When someone loves you, they care enormously. — Sarah Hepola