Nothing Good Can Come from This

by Kristi Coulter

Booze is the oil in our motors, the thing that keeps us purring when we should be making other kinds of noise.

I’m burning with clarity, and I want all of womankind to burn with me so we can incinerate the patriarchy just by existing. I don’t want women to blur the edges of their bad days or use wine to talk themselves down from causing righteous trouble.

Women get named after nature, but it’s rarely named after us.

Something happened to make me want to drink a bottle of wine. And wanting meant I had to. So I did.

My eventual sobriety, which I’d imagined would feel like a lifelong panic attack, turned out to be more like ripping off a giant Band-Aid: a moment of searing pain followed by wonder that I’d ever thought I needed that much protection.

I thought it might feel like a weight falling from my shoulders, but it was more like pushing a heavy door open a little wider—wide enough to walk through.

Being the Only Woman at the Table means spending a lot of time trying to talk, because there are mere microseconds between one man finishing his thought and the next one jumping in and no one bothers to read nonverbal cues, or talking and seeing half the room choose that moment to look at their phones.

Don’t roll over. Don’t trust in good intentions. Don’t think you’re too special to be hurt. Don’t blunt your own brain.

a voice inside said, Sure, you could drink. But he will still be president.

It doesn’t take willpower to avoid the thing that is sure to ruin my life; it just takes a fierce, overriding desire to not ruin my life.