“The only time you mustn't fail is the last time you try.” -Charles Kettering
I always wanted to throw my neighbors off. There isn’t any reason to leave your house for ten to fifteen minutes at a time, several times a day, and return home with nothing. I started leaving the house with a blanket and returning with my black bag stashed underneath the blanket, being careful not to clank my bottles together while walking into the house. If a neighbor was standing outside, I would sit in my car playing on my phone slowly growing more agitated with my neighbors for delaying my next drunk.This was only one of many of my insane systems. My washing machine had been broken since October 2021. I used this as my excuse to leave the house for an extended period of time on the weekends.I was now completing three tasks at once 1. Doing laundry 2. Visiting the liquor store 3. Bringing the bottles into the house in my clean baskets of laundry rather than underneath a blanket.
February 27, 2021, was just like any other Saturday. I’d been drinking every day for the past ten days, but I needed to wash clothes. I was sober enough to drive to the laundry mat, but I needed to wait until at least 8:00 am so I could hit the liquor store after my clothes were clean. I canceled plans to visit Virginia later that day (I was way too weak and hungover to make that two-hour round trip drive)and trudged to the laundry mat.After securing my alcohol into my clean clothes,I brought the baskets into my basement with all intentions of folding them as I drank. I easily finished the first bottle of Champagne and felt nothing. I finished the second bottle and felt angry.
I was so drunk, I couldn’t get any more drunk than I already was. I wasn’t blacking out. I decided to go through my unopened mail. I opened a letter from my first cousin, who had written an article titled “One Black family’s resilience and hope amid an era of reckoning”After reading the article, something in me clicked. I had to ask for help in order to get help and I was tired of alcohol beating me while I was down. Usually, at this point of thinking, I passed out. That day, I didn’t.I called my parents and one of my girlfriends and told them a portion of the story, without revealing everything, but enough that probably scared the three of them. When I woke up my parents were at my house.