The Revolution Will Not Keep You Sober by Natasha Elle Thomas

The Revolution Will Not Keep You Sober:
An Elegy for What We Sacrifice in Marriage, on the Clock, and for the Movement

1.

When the self-help gurus talked about the importance of establishing daily rituals, I wondered if my standing in the Golden Spot liquor store line counted. If so, color me “self-actualized,” because there I was, faithfully at the top of many mornings. When it came to functional day drinking, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a disciple more devout than me.

That morning, I stood in line before work remembering how one of the self-help books said all true rituals require three things: intentionality, repetition, and meaning. Between my clear intention of starting my workdays at least a little tipsy and Bacardi Gold’s recurring role in the whole affair, I had almost all of the elements.

Except the meaning.

And because I suspected the meaning lived behind some psychological paywall inside me that I wasn’t willing to unlock, I was okay with that.

Whenever the bell above the door rang as I entered Golden Spot, Ali, the grandfatherly owner who doubled as the cashier, spotted me and had my bottle waiting by the time I reached the counter. We both knew buying the larger fifth was more fiscally sound, but buying the daily pint let us pretend—just a little—that I wasn’t drinking as much or as often as I was.

Ali was, I guessed, somewhere in his seventies, a small, jaunty, ecru-toned, man. He had an unexpectedly lush head of silver hair and warped wire-rim glasses that were always slipping down his nose. But he moved like someone half his age, steady, sharp, and, I was sure, fully aware of what it meant that I came into his liquor store nearly every day now.

“Pretty decent weather we’re having,” he mused, peering over his glasses out the front window.

“Define ‘decent,’” I quipped before relenting. “But hey, I’ll take it. It could be worse.”

“Pure Michigan!” he laughed. 

It was always like this with Ali, this dance of quiet complicity disguised as pleasantries.

While glancing around the store to make sure no one I knew was there, more importantly, to make sure no one who knew me was there, I accidentally locked eyes with Isaac, another Golden Spot regular. We were a study in contrasts: me in my pulled-together work clothes, hair smoothed into a chignon, manicured hands; him in dingy jeans, a paint-splattered hoodie, construction-worker hands. And yet, a recognition flickered between us. Something commiserative. We were the same. Pari passu

I broke eye contact first.

“Have a good one,” I called out to Ali as I slid the bottle into my oversized purse and headed out the door.

“Try to stay outta trouble!” he chuckled.

2.

When I pulled into the university parking lot, I took two quick shots that burned going down. Whatever small worry I had about the harm I was inflicting on my body dissolved as a dark, smoky warmth spread through my chest—familiar, comforting, steadying my nerves, quelling my anxiety.

We all have our rituals, I rationalized.

I glanced in the rearview mirror. Aside from a ruddy flush creeping across my face, I thought I looked fine, still crisp, competent, not nearly as tipsy as I felt. Hoping to mask the Bacardi’s sharp scent, I took a swig of water and popped a mint. Convinced I looked every bit the sober, professional woman I desperately wanted to be, I went to meet my team.

It was September 2018, just weeks before the midterm elections. I was the Regional Director for a national political action committee charged with turning out young progressive voters. We organized on campuses and online, pouring resources into battleground states that could tip red or blue. Michigan, where I lived, was one of them. 

We’d claimed the university food court as our headquarters for the day, a motley group of mostly college students, with a few older community leaders mixed in. I was the lead, but the strain showed on all of us.

Jason, as moody and jittery as ever, gripped two Starbucks cups in his heavy hands. Kayla’s red-rimmed eyes were fixed on nothing across the street. Vashti’s head, shrouded in an oversized Black Lives Matter hoodie, rested face down on the table.

“What you got for us today?” Marie asked with a half-smile, doing her best to muster some enthusiasm. I smiled back. Marie, one of our older organizers, was a grounding force; her hearty greetings and lilting voice always managed to inject a little life into the circle.

Vashti lifted her head from the table. Jason set down his coffees to take notes. Kayla turned to face us.

“National says you all need to register at least 100 voters today,” I said, catching the rum slur in my voice and hoping no one else did. Marie shot me a quick, curious glance. She said nothing.

“100?” Jason echoed, disbelief cutting through the groans and eye rolls that followed. “Are they high?”

“I know,” I said. “I tried to tell them it’s a smaller school. We’ve already pulled pretty much everyone we can from this campus. There just aren’t that many left. I’m sorry, y’all.”

Vashti moved first, grabbing clipboards and forms from the supply box. “Let’s just get it done,” she snapped.

“I know it’s a lot,” I said. “Trust me. But the goal is the goal. Let’s just knock it out.” I tried—and failed—to mimic Vashti’s decisiveness and Marie’s enthusiasm.

We knew the midterms mattered in ways that went far beyond the ballot. A right-wing administration was in power, and this election felt like a real chance to push back, to resist the authoritarianism and racism and the relentless attacks on women, immigrants, and working-class communities. We had to get out and organize, every campus, every precinct, every voter we could reach.

Our goal for that day? 100 new voters. On paper, it sounded doable. In reality, it was a much harder sell. We’d been working this campus all year, scraping the edges of unregistered voters. None of that mattered to the brass. We were expected to get it done. And explain ourselves when we didn’t.

Once everyone had their registration forms, they peeled off, pissed and demoralized. I drifted back to my car. Back at my home office, reports waited, turf needed cutting, and directors’ debriefs loomed later that night.

I took another shot in the car and thought about the late nights and the endless push for more. More voters. More numbers. More neighborhoods. More events. More calls. The spiral of overwork and overwhelm felt unstoppable. And yet, it would be disingenuous to say the pressure was just external. Nearly every movement worker I knew overextended themselves, driven by a fervent mix of passion, zeal, and self-imposed martyrdom. It was baked in; we believed in our causes down to the marrow.

I’m not even sure how I ended up working in politics; I never particularly cared for it. But when I was five years old, I became so inconsolable after watching the nightly news that my mother eventually (and temporarily) banned me from it. I saw the brutality, the injustice, and felt responsible for fixing it, even as I realized, painfully, that I was powerless to do so.

I told myself that when I was an adult, I wouldn’t just watch. I’d take action. That instinct toward justice and compassion has always been part of who I am.

Like many with this same instinct and drive, I became singular in the work of trying to solve the world’s problems. Personally and professionally, I constantly butted up against entrenched systems of oppression and accepted that dismantling those leviathans required sacrifice.

Revolutions always do.

And yet, I watched our entire 2018 midterm election team, and movement workers in general breaking ourselves under the weight of duty. Here we were, self-immolating, mortgaging our minds, bodies, and souls in the name of “liberation.” The irony was not lost on me.

It was starting to dawn on me that, despite our best efforts at decolonization, the indoctrination was clear; we had fully absorbed the capitalistic ethos of overwork, exhaustion, and disposability. The very ethos we convinced ourselves we were dismantling.

We all have our rituals.

3.

After the short commute home, I pulled into the parking lot of our upscale apartment complex. I was hopping out of the car when the slow, opening chords of La’Porsha Renae’s “Good Woman” came on the radio and stopped me.

Boy, I’m telling you God is my witness
That you gonna sit right here and listen till I’m finished
’Cause you ain’t got nowhere to go
Don’t think that I don’t know that you ain’t been telling the truth…

I scanned the parking lot for my husband Derrick’s Hyundai. It wasn’t there. I worked from home; he didn’t—and since it was 12:45 p.m., he was probably at lunch.

I wondered if he was with Jamie, a well-heeled white woman who had gone from co-worker to “one of his best friends” in a surprisingly short span, especially for a man whose other best friends were men he’d known since high school and college. Something angry and acidic churned in me at the thought of them together…some of it, I knew, was the rum. Jamie wasn’t the first; she was just the latest in a string of women who, thanks to Derrick’s porous boundaries, insatiable need for validation, and chimeric charm, had grown far too comfortable opining about and encroaching on our nine-year marriage. A true Lothario, Derrick increasingly funneled what little emotional availability he possessed toward a small, fawning cadre of women he kept in orbit.

Derrick always insisted these women were just friends, and Jamie was no different. Like the others, he let her cross lines in ways I found both desperate and disrespectful. I’d seen the texts she sent him:

Jamie: Derrick, please know that I’m here if you need me for anything.  

Jamie: And I do mean anything.

He’d “loved” the second message.

A self-proclaimed “white ally,” she never missed a chance to remind people she operated within a “social justice framework,” but I questioned the performativity of it all. The race play. The white-woman entitlement that emboldened her to sow disruption and confusion within our Black marriage and family. Whether in the movement or in my marriage, I’d come to know, intimately, the quiet violences of white women’s so-called “allyship.”

My movement work was exhausting, yes, but at least it was fulfilling. I believed in it. I could no longer say the same about Derrick or my marriage. The repeated crossing of boundaries was an infidelity and disloyalty I could no longer tolerate. A few weeks earlier, I’d told him I was filing for divorce.

I was relieved Derrick wasn’t home. With the kids at school,  I could drink more without having to hide or explain. I set my bags down, took another shot, grabbed a cold slice of pizza, and opened my laptop to start the reports. When the phone rang, I jumped like I’d been caught.

“Hey!” It was Cassie, one of the organizers on our team.

“Hey, Cass,” I said. “How’s it going?”

She started telling me that they’d run out of voter registration forms, but my limbs began to feel heavy. The sunlight through the window swam before my eyes…

4.

Hours later, a hand on my shoulder and a shaky voice pulled me back.

“Mom, you okay? You’ve been asleep for a long time.”

It was Nassir, my 9-year-old son. Masai, my 16-year-old, hovered behind him, pacing, concern creasing both their faces.

It took a minute to get my bearings. I was home. On the couch. The kids were home. Derrick wasn’t.

“I’m fine, y’all,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

But… wasn’t I just talking to Cassie?

I reached for my phone. Our call had been nearly three hours ago. The call log said it lasted ten minutes, but I only remembered the first few seconds.

Five missed calls and two voicemails from Liz, the State Director and my direct supervisor, blinked at me.

And then it hit me: I had blacked out.

Hot waves of shame and panic washed over me.

But I remembered—the boys. My boys.

They were watching me and the love and fear mirrored on their faces, jolting me back into my body, back into mama mode.

“I’m okay, y’all. Don’t worry. I’ve just been working a lot. I’m tired,” I smiled. “Go to your rooms. I’m good. I’ll call my boss and then order us some dinner. Y’all want Chinese?”

The boys weren’t completely convinced, but relieved enough to give me lingering hugs, affirm our favorite Chinese spot, Ten Fu, and head to their rooms after a few more reassurances.

I knew I needed to call Liz, but I called Ten Fu first. It was late and the kids were hungry. Also, I was stalling. Yes, I’d blacked out before, but never mid-conversation, never at work.

My God. What had I said to Cassie?

What might Liz (and my other bosses) already know?

Sweat soaked my shirt. I pressed play on Liz’s first voicemail:

Voicemail 1:
“Hey Natasha, Cassie called us. I’m concerned. It’s important you call me as soon as possible.”

Voicemail 2:
“Hi again. Cassie called us. I’m required to alert the national directors about this. I’m worried about you. Please call. We need to talk about what happened ASAP.”

What did happen during that lost time? A million possibilities raced through my mind. After several failed attempts, I stopped shaking enough to call Liz back.

Before I could speak, she did.

“Are you okay?”

Relief washed over me. Something deep inside unclenched. Her voice felt warm, concerned. Nothing like the anger or censure I’d braced for.

She said Cassie had called her, alarmed that during our conversation I’d started slurring my words and repeating myself. Eventually, I became practically incoherent and then went radio silent.

Though a few other possibilities could have been at play, Cassie told Liz she was pretty sure I wasn’t dying, just drunk. Liz gave me an out and asked if that was true. Was I really drunk on the job, as Cassie suspected? Or was there some other plausible explanation that would make this easier for both of us?

I was tempted to take the out. To spin a story. To say it was all a misunderstanding. Some undisclosed medical condition, maybe a bad reaction to a new medication.

But a deeper, rawer part of me was tired of hiding, ready for someone to finally see me, how fragile I was in that moment, how unraveled I’d become.

I knew I was risking my job, but I sensed an even greater risk in staying silent. As embarrassing as this whole debacle was, it had, however unceremoniously, provided the witness I needed. The relief I felt surprised me. I realized I needed to speak about what I was navigating and, more importantly, I needed someone to hear me.

So, I told her the truth. Yes, I’d been drinking on the job. Yes, I’d drunk so much that day that I’d apparently blacked out during my conversation with Cassie. I was exhausted, anxious, and stressed. The job was a major—though not the only—contributor. Yes, I was  self-medicating. No, as much as my job stressed me out, I didn’t want to lose it.

Liz was far more understanding than she had to be.

“You’re not the only one,” she sighed. “A lot of us are just trying to survive this craziness”

There was a heaviness in her voice – and perhaps…maybe a hint of confession? She explained that protocol required her to report the situation to leadership at the national level.

They would ultimately decide my fate.

Still, she assured me she’d advocate on my behalf, arguing that one moment of buckling under the immense pressure we all endured shouldn’t erase the strong track record I’d built.

I didn’t tell her it had been more than one moment.

She ended our call with a warning: there couldn’t be a next time. 

I understood.

Dinner arrived, and the kids and I ate.

5. 

That night, I sat in bed, reading Joan Didion’s essay “On Self-Respect,” : 

“Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves…”

I reread it several times, tears blurring the page.

I heard Derrick’s keys in  the front door. I pretended to sleep as he entered the room; he didn’t bother to check. He walked straight to the bathroom, took a quick shower, tossed his clothes straight into the washer, then went to sleep in the living room, just as he had for months.

I was suspicious, as always, but far too weary to play forensics anymore.

I thought about the pending divorce.
About the weight of being the family breadwinner.
About the cost of pretending..
About the tightrope I walked between composure and collapse.

I thought about how capitalism, racism, sexism, classism, ableism, patriarchy—every system of oppression and exploitation—flourishes the more we disconnect from ourselves, dissociate from our bodies, neglect  our needs, and hyper-fixate on the external world to the detriment of our internal one.

I thought about my own complicity, constantly tripping over the fault lines of performance, pretension, politics, perfectionism, and pain. Always numbing the ache of feeling both called and bound at the same time.

I  slid open the nightstand drawer, fumbling  until I found the small flask of rum.

We all have our rituals.

And we all have our reckonings, someone inside me replied.

I pretended not to hear her.

I took a sip.

Natasha Elle Thomas is featured in Hollywood Reporter, Kalfou: Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies, and other publications. She authored the poetic foreword for IMAGN – Increasing Minority Awareness of Genetics Now, published by the Congressional Black Caucus and Johns Hopkins University, and appears in the forthcoming anthology, Darling Nikki.

18 June 2026