Cleaning house

I don't remember much about my life between the ages of twenty three and twenty five. 

What I do have, however, are bits and pieces of memories. 

Rolling over in the morning to reach for my pipe. Drinking in the shower to save time. Giving blowjobs to an older guy in my apartment building because he always gave me a quarter sack of weed afterwards. Sneaking shots of vodka at work. Crawling up the stairs to my apartment. Waking up and wondering what I had done the night before. People's faces, but never their names. This game my friends and I played where we would all try to walk down the sidewalk, and the one who made it furthest without falling always drive us to the next bar. Taking handfuls of pills and not knowing what they were. Parties every night, in apartments and houses I didn't know and wouldn't be able to recognize while sober. 

What I also don't remember is my living environment. I had my own tiny apartment, and a landlord(who is the kindest man alive) who would let me go months at a time without paying rent because he didn't want me out on the streets. 

I don't remember much about the apartment but I do have dozens of pictures of the chaos. 

Cups half full of murky liquids on every available surface. My 'fuck pile' where I kept the clothes, lighters, and other assorted crap my numerous one night stands had left behind. Heaping full ashtrays, most of the cigarettes with marks of my favorite maroon lipstick. Pipes everywhere. Dozens of empty takeout boxes from my job. Empty bottles of cheap wine lining the walls. Sticks of incense, burned long ago. Ends of blunts, piled high on my bed stand so that I could empty them into my pipe late at night. 

I was so fucked up so much of the time I didn't realize how bad it was. 

One night, stumbling home after four(or five, I can't remember) of my male coworkers had gotten me really drunk, held me down, and sexually assaulted me, I decided that I was done and that I needed a change. It wasn't the first time something like that had happened, but I knew that night that it would be my last. 

The next day, I called in sick to work. Then I drive to the Dollar General and bought two 20-packs of heavy duty garbage bags. 

I went home, locked the door behind me, and started cleaning house. 

I cleaned for ten hours solid, and that ten hours was the longest amount of time I had been sober in almost two years. 

That night, when my friends called to see why I wasn't at the bar, I told them I couldn't go out because I needed to clean my apartment. 

I spent the next three months cleaning that apartment and figuring out my life. By the time I was done, I had also cleaned dozens of numbers out of my black book, and I never talked to most of those people again.