Sarah Hepola Quotes

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?

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.

What nobody ever tells you is that miracles can be very, very uncomfortable.

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

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

My shelves were filled with books I could not finish and textbooks I never cracked. But I was always cramming for the test about Anna's past. I paid lavish attention to every word she spoke. Until then, it had not occurred to me what an act of love this was: to remember another person's life.

I wanted to be like her: tough and foxy. I wanted to borrow her brassiness: What are you looking at? Who gave you permission to look at me? How exciting to barge through the world, never apologizing for your place in it but demanding everyone else's license and registration.

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.

Sometimes I felt like I was living on an island, where all I did was hope a friend would float by, and when they finally arrived, I began to wonder when they'd go away.

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

I had mental arguments with nearly everyone who spoke. (I usually won.)

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

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.

So I sauntered up to those amber bottles, and I learned to swallow their violence. Do that enough, and you will reorient your whole pleasure system. Butterfly kisses became boring. You crave blood. Hit me, motherfucker. Hit me harder this time.

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.

The next week was humiliation buffet. There are times when you want to die. And then there are times when one death is simply not enough. You need to borrow other people's live and end them, too.

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

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.

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.

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

I understood drinking to be the gasoline of all adventure.

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

But fearing another person's opinion never stops them from having one.

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.

I had two speeds, which often varied with my blood alcohol level: fine with whatever, and never, ever satisfied. Where was the balance between these two?

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.

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

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

Current wisdom dictates a heroine in search of happiness should ditch the prince, skip the diet--and gain acceptance. Stop changing ourself to please the world and start finding happiness within.

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