April 5th, 2025

Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!!!

Two o’clock in the afternoon. This couldn’t be happening, right? For the last ten years, my drinking had been an “at-home” affair. Hidden. Unseen. Unjudged. But somehow, I’d ended up at a local bar—the last thing I remembered. Coming to on my couch, with no recollection of how I got there, I knew one thing: This was bad. Really, really bad.

In a panic, I called my best friend for a ride to my car, wherever it was. Of course, she’d oblige; she often did when I found myself in this predicament. But this time? It was never this bad. Within the hour, she was at my house, husband in tow—great, another witness to my humiliation. We started towards what I thought was the last bar, but I made a last-minute decision to check the first bar, the one I remembered being at before the blackout.. Surely, I hadn’t driven to a second place. Even I wasn’t that stupid. Sure enough, there sat my car. My friend, being the Chatty Kathy she was, immediately wanted to hold me hostage with filling me in on recent events in her life.  But with my stomach on the verge of revolting all over her brand-new car, I basically told her to shut the fuck up and thanked her for the ride. I just needed to get out, go home, wallow in my humiliation, and try to piece together the wreckage of the night before.

What I hadn’t mentioned was the state I was in when I woke up: a total muddy disaster. Mud was caked everywhere—on my face, in my hair. My clothes were so ruined they went straight into the trash. The only small mercy was that I was, in fact, wearing clothes. That was it for silver linings.

I’m sure everyone has used the expression, “I feel like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck,” after a night of drinking. (Personally, I’ve always been more partial to, “I feel like a can of smashed assholes.”) This time, though, I literally felt like I’d been hit by a Mack truck. I could barely move, and I’d never been that sore after a night of drinking in my life. It hurt to sit, it hurt to stand, it hurt to breathe.

After dragging myself home and sleeping until seven that evening, fragments of the night began to surface. Then it hit me. Jesus Christ. My neighbor. He’d picked me up out of my yard and somehow wrestled me into my house. I’m 51, likely the youngest homeowner in my neighborhood, and the man must be a superhero because I still have no idea how he managed that.

Over the course of the last several months, bits and pieces have continued to surface. Things I’m absolutely not ready to talk about or type out loud yet. It’s just too painful and humiliating.

And of course, there was a guy. A guy I really liked. A guy who saw me in my absolute worst possible state – who I really was the moment I took that first drink. A guy I haven’t seen or heard from since that night. 

Until seven days ago.