(2/4) Teachers expressed concern. One day, I’d brought a salad for lunch. In the cafeteria, one teacher suggested that I skip the glass of wine on the side. “The alcohol can’t be helping,” she said, her voice high pitched and apologetic, her face a familiar mask of studied, sympathetic pain. I felt the salad turn slimy and sad in my mouth, limp greens coating my tongue. I dropped the remainder in the trash, and forwent lunch for the next several days. So I got a part-time job, using the money to hire a personal trainer. He was fantastic: the kind of musclebound man I had learned to fear, but with an openness and kindness that consistently caught me off guard. When I first visited him, he asked me what my goals were. I said I wanted to stop being unhealthy. “What do you do that’s unhealthy?” he asked. “I drink every day,” I said. He furrowed his brow, then reframed: “your goals could be that you want to be able to go hiking with a friend, or you want to run a half-marathon, or you want to be strong enough to pick up your little sister. It doesn’t have to be about your drinking.” I wanted to cry. He had seemed so nice, but he didn’t understand. He hadn’t been to the rehab I’d been sent to as a child. He hadn’t seen the sidelong glances as I stumbled through the city, and the echoes of laughter I could never be sure weren’t about me. It did have to be about my drinking. I relented, remembering the work and savings that had gotten me there. My goal was to build endurance, so that I could run the mile at school without coming in last. And, over months’ worth of work, I achieved that goal, and I set another. And another. And another. I kept meeting goals, kept getting stronger and healthier. I lost a little bit of weight, but I was still a drunk. And because I was still a drunk, anyone at any time could decide to express concern, a reminder of just how clearly I was failing to meet my deepest need: putting down the bottle. I launched a new strategy, one that I used for years, well into college. I illustrated all the ways I was trying to stop drinking and take charge of my health: writing blog posts about all the meals I was cooking and how healthy they were. Opening each conversation with some anecdote that had happened at the gym that week. Invariably, someone would chime in with a suggestion about cutting back on alcohol. Have you tried those meetings? Did you know It worked for my sister or Oprah says to do it? It didn’t matter what I said or did. There always seemed to be someone ready to offer unsolicited advice. It was a crashing, atonal symphony, discordant notes all insistent on their own direction. I kept searching for a melody that never came. When I would ask, once in a great while, for a moment of silence, I’d see that mask again: the grimace that everyone learns to use with problem drinkers. "I’m just concerned for your health." I had played a game I couldn’t win. As long as I was drinking, I would always be seen as unhealthy. All of the trying, all of the successes, all of the little affirmations and crushing defeats - the only part of me that could be seen was the failure. When I was drunk, I would always be worthy of blame. And so, again, I withdrew. I stopped going shopping with friends to save myself from the countless sidelong glances from salespeople. I stopped going out. I stopped dating, or even talking about crushes.