I saw three different therapists my freshman year of college.

The first’s name was Thiago. I visited him in a little shack where I sat on the edge of his couch gripping my tote bag and clicking a pen over and over again.

Even before I began speaking, my eyes welled up with tears. I told him about my desire for friends and straight As and how I wanted to be liked by everyone. I did not tell him about the boy who approached me at a bar and very casually stated that everyone in our year knew that I had sex on the street with an upperclassman.

Thiago wore a mask, which I didn’t like. It was as though I was speaking to a half human. Only eyes but without a mouth. Mostly, he did the talking. He used a large notepad to draw circles and told me that I have a strong internal parent.

The upperclassman had sent me a DM on Instagram the day after we hooked up. Something along the lines of: Let’s just keep this between us. haha. goodbye. I was hungover but happy.

This was what college was about, right? I suggested that we hangout sometime. To which, of course, he did not reply.

The next time I went to a therapist, it was not by choice. Apparently when you drink so much alcohol that you pass out on your dorm’s communal floor and wake to find yourself surrounded by security guards, it signals that you need help.

I dragged my feet and delayed reaching out to my assigned counselor. During my winter school break and home from studying abroad in Italy, baking Christmas cookies and skating on the pond outside my house took priority. However, a short email with the words “conduct case” and “lack of compliance” pushed me to take action. Mostly, I was worried that my parents would be contacted.

While still on my break, I took the four-hour trip with my mom to New York City. It was January and, in the evening, we left my cousin’s apartment to see a Broadway show.

On the train we encountered a body. It was a girl, just a few years older than me, laying across a set of seats. Skin pale and sticky. Her brown hair pasted to the side of her face. She twitched, indicating that she was slightly alive. My eyes darted. Do something, I thought. My mom sighed, filling the silence with a warning about the dangers of drug use. The train stopped and we got off.

Silvia was my SAFE counselor. She had a thick Italian accent and spoke with me over Zoom. I had to take a quiz about the amount I drank in a week. Of course, my number of drinks was far too high, but I am willing to bet that everyone else lies. She echoed Thiago’s theory about my need for control and said that if I was not so hard on myself, perhaps I would not be so tempted by the freedom I felt when drinking alcohol. And then she said it might help if I let myself get a B every once in a while. I nodded but shuddered internally.

I do not know when the voice in my head began, but as a child I remember running to my mother each day after school with a laundry list of confessions that were burdening me. Cutting a boy in line for the pencil sharpener, forgetting to raise my hand. It went on and on. Any slip up, no matter how small, became etched in my brain. I found myself racked with unbearable guilt and began wearing an elastic band which I could snap whenever these thoughts appeared.

My freshman year of high school is when my relationship with alcohol began. The first time it was only a few sips and then I stopped, halted by a thick sense of shame. A few months later a more effective introduction took place. Small bottles filled with Fireball, a cinnamon flavored whiskey. Previously, I had adhered to a strict no drinking policy and was such a straight edge kid that when my older sister was caught shotgunning beer from a Bud light can, my mom shared her trepidations around parenting with me.

Curiosity killed my innocence. Each sip of the strange cinnamon substance cleared the tiny pin pricks in my brain. I was letting go of the perfect daughter, student, friend and all of her painful anxieties. That night I fell down a set of stairs, told half the school I was in love with an older boy on my swim team, and screamed at my best friend.

The next day, standing in a small convenience store wearing floral spandex and a neon top, I confessed everything. Crinkles carved on my mother’s face as she shopped for Sunday breakfast groceries. Thus began a tradition of empty apologies served with a side of nausea and mascara smudged under eyes.

When I was in boarding school the apologies were easier, sent over text from hundreds of miles away. I’m very sorry for being such a disappointment. I love you.

My messages did not include confessions of my waking up in the school medical center with an overnight nurse lying next to me. Or creeping to the bathroom and peeling off my pants to find them covered in shit. But I did write and tell my mother that I had seen a ladybug and thought it was a sign of hope…but it was dead.

I wanted my mom to feel bad and tell me that despite my nights blacking out, I was still the perfect daughter that I so desperately needed to be.

The third therapist I went to was recommended by a friend of my mom. She had short brown hair and a warm laugh. It was summertime, and her place was hidden amongst a row of shops. We chatted for a while and then I laid back in a soft reclining chair and she hypnotized me.

Beaches and sand and only drinking two drinks and beaches and ocean waves and only drinking two drinks. I haven’t gotten drunk since.

Just kidding.

I tell myself that I am not the girl on the train.

I do get straight As and go to bed by 11 pm most nights. On weekends, I usually prefer to stay in. My assignments are submitted on time. I write thank you notes and do extra credit work and am reliable and good.

When the paramedics came to assess my drunken state in the common room at school, all I could manage to talk about was my GPA. I sobbed on and on and on about how this could not get in my way. I shared my big dreams, babbling nonsense that likely made little sense at all.

Waking up is the hardest part. Cleaning the sick off my face. Questioning what I have done. Scrambling to text the friend or stranger that was stuck taking care of me. Sometimes it is fun. Not the damage control but laughing afterward at the absurdity of it all. Relishing this bold promiscuous version of myself. Sex after all can be about the story we tell, even if pleasure is minimal when everything is blurred. Look at what I did! Wild, funny, and far from boring.

It is not worth the pain. The gutted hangovers, a slow gnawing on friendship bonds, and the subtle tearing down of the person I thought that I was. I do not want to be that drunken version of myself. Unfortunately, telling myself “never again” becomes meaningless the third, fourth, fifth time around.

Maybe the girl I saw on the train felt the same way and waking up the next day thought “never again.” Until the next weekend when her friends, the same ones who rolled their eyes at her going overboard, now complained out about her being oh so lame.

Often, I scold friends about the damaging effects of smoking cigarettes, urge them not to skip class and prod them to turn in assignments on time. I stand high and mighty until I am bent over and vomiting into the cold toilet bowl at a stranger’s house. But there is no severing of the person I am when drinking from the me of every other day. How easy that would be. To turn back and think what a wreck! What a mess! Before walking swiftly away.

I am a 19-year-old girl who cannot handle her alcohol but who will probably keep drinking anyway. Lying on the bathroom floor, I ask my mom how to make the pain go away. I rub makeup remover on my stained eyes and crouch under icy water and eat bread straight from the packaging because I just want to be good again and that is what my mom has said works best.

***

Josie Leach is in her third year at NYU majoring in Gender Studies and Creative Writing. In her free time, she loves reading books about women in their 20s, watching NY Times cooking videos and having long winded conversations about the state of the world.