Drunk Mom Quotes

“It was too much happiness. Happiness puts you at too much risk - what if you were to lose it? Too much happiness is a paradox. It's a tragedy, even: getting something you've always wanted but being unable to keep it.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom

“There's this parallel, perhaps less conscious desire, which is to numb myself to the world. To deal with the world tomorrow. Living is difficult. Dying is difficult.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“...there are many who want it but for whom the train of compulsion doesn't seem to stop. They never get that moment, that pause that will be long enough for them to get off. Because that's all it is - for some the train is too fast, some sleep through the stops, some jump off and jump right back on because they forget immediately that this is the death train. Me? I slept, went too fast, forgot... but then finally, stopped, limping on my broken toe, the lies falling off me, making me light, making me vulnerable. Making me strong. So strong that for one moment I could halt the whole fucking train.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom

“The printer in the corner of the office starts choking and then spits up pages.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom

“It’s as if we’re all floating and sometimes gravity brings us down and we touch a soft spot in our lives and when we do, some of us fall right through.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“Motherhood is an infinity of second chances. It is insanity by repetition.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“Albert Einstein’s “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“don’t blame you for hating me for not wanting to stop. For relapsing and not wanting to stop. It happened because my best friend fell in love. Or because I felt old. Or it happened because I was far away from home. It just happened. Because I wanted a drink. Because the wanting was stronger than me.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“it is ingrained in you.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“Because of Frankie. Because I couldn’t handle all the love.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“I’m just buzzed from all this angry energy above me; I am hysterical and can’t stop shouting to stop it myself, and then my cheek stings as someone slaps me. I stop it.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“I don’t really want to commit suicide, but I start doing things like crossing the busy street two steps later than would be perfectly safe—my shadow getting struck and killed after I land on the sidewalk.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“We’re a walking fucking trauma, all of us.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“Some people in AA tend to stay away when they know you’re drinking actively; some try to save you too hard. Some don’t even know you’re drinking because you cut them off because of your own shame. Some would never think to reach out because you always appear just fine. Sober. Well put together. Strong.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“Perhaps I watch the show because I need to know if there’s a way to just stop when I want to, but most important, if there’s a way to remain stopped later on in the day.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“In the end, out of all this effort, my body finally emits a tiny fart into the chair’s spongy essence, letting it mix with all the farts from the past.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“And this is not the first time I have woken up with this type of anxiety, thinking of ways to annihilate myself instead of confronting what could possibly be outside my eyelids. This is the anxiety well known to blackout drunks coming out of the soft, merciful abyss, the dam breaking, the questions rushing in: Where? How? When? Wherehowwhen?”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“I dislike the words suffering, suffered. As if I had done something heroic like my grandma, getting captured by the Nazis and sent to a work camp and surviving. I never heard her use those words. But okay, suffered. Suffering. I nod.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“I want to move furniture. It’s late, my boyfriend says. This house needs more space, I declare. My boyfriend—I have no idea where he is at this point. He doesn’t register. Maybe he’s in one of the boxes too, with the baby. No matter. I’m driven by the need for space but mostly by the need for destruction.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“I have to stop singing because it’s hard to in this wind, but I remain happy. I’m pushing the stroller through all this windy whiteness, and in my head I count the cans in the diaper bag: There should be four left. With this open one it’s four and a half, although more like four and one-third.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“Three days sober, I read like I drink.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“The kid serving me seems scornful when I order a third beer. He asks me in broken English if I want anything else to eat besides soybeans. Why? Is he worried about my health? I hate these stupid soybeans but no, I don’t want anything else. And I hate this beer, as a matter of fact. And this restaurant. Does he think I want to be here? Really? That out of the entire, beautiful city of Montreal, I picked this basement to spend the rest of my night—here, where nobody seems to be speaking English?”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“His mouth was a portal to the universe. So I went ahead and I destroyed that connection.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“AA is rooms full of people who are living completely against their nature—the nature that requires them to drink and die. These are the proverbial fish out of water. And they are walking the earth, many of them walking it for years.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“Suitcases were designed for liars. ——”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“Alcoholics are the worst of the weak. They hang on like leeches, all suction, no spine.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“And this is not the first time I have woken up with this type of anxiety, thinking of ways to annihilate myself instead of confronting what could possibly be outside my eyelids. This is the anxiety well known to blackout drunks coming out of the soft, merciful abyss, the dam breaking, the questions rushing in: Where? How?”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“Maybe I’m so into the show because I want to see that I’m not as bad as most of the people on it.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“read dozens of books to try to distract my insistent brain,”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom: A Memoir

“Later, we do an exercise where we Trigger Situations and solutions for how to deal with them.
My triggers: morning, evening, happy, sad, nothing, something.”
― Jowita Bydlowska, Drunk Mom