But lately, when I’m drunk, I feel a hostility that I’ve never known before. It is a tension deep in my gut that makes me want to yell until my face is red, knock over glasses with the back of my hand, and kick people I don’t know in the shins.

Me? I'm just a literary girl gone wrong. Slow with the tongue. Quick with the pen. Undeniably cute. But, on the whole, ill-equipped for the privilege of living.

But in college, we can wear our alcohol abuse as proudly as our university sweatshirts; the two concepts are virtually synonymous.

Without a bottle to hold, I feel incomplete, the way Plato says we are each born only half a circle, and we spend out lives seeking out our other half. A drink is my beloved. Without it, I am wanting; I feel half finished.

My demeanor isn't that of a woman enraged. To see me slumped, glassy-eyed, holding a sandwich someone has cut for me into four "manageable" pieces, a person might tell you I look much more like a woman subdued.

For the first month of school, writing is its own upper. Pounding on my computer keys feels like playing the piano, like arranging words into harmony that sings back to me.

I am aware that somewhere along the line, I've subconsciously turned down the pitch of my speech, like a silencer of a gun that softens the sound of its firing. Now, even when I yell, I don't feel like I am using my full voice.