Back in the day, when all I had to worry about was remembering to wear pants and not spending too much time on dudes who didn’t deserve it, I drank a lot.

Beforehand, I’d been married young to an alcoholic who insisted that I not drink in order to support him, so by the time we divorced, I guess I felt like I needed to make up for lost time. There were a number of times that I’m lucky I wasn’t seriously hurt, including a time that I thought it was a good idea to march down Austin’s wild Dirty 6th at 3 AM alone, but that’s not the point right now.

Instead, I’ve been thinking a lot about my stages of drunkenness. We all have them. And mine always went a bit like this:

Stage 1: Barely affected

Stage 2: I am a different person — confident, happy, talkative, charismatic, and good at practically everything.

Stage 3: Should’ve stopped at stage two, because now I’m just loud and also bad at practically everything.

Stage 4: I am sleepy and grumpy and I want to go home.

Stage 5: I don’t really remember much and I probably fall asleep on someone’s couch or on a bench somewhere.

Stage 6: There is puking. This has always happened once and I will do everything I can for it not to happen again.

While we could go into each stage and probably point out a story or two from each, I’ve been really focused often on stage two.

I remember it well: I would always be feeling a little of that light, swimmy feeling, but not enough to be uncomfortable. I’d be happily talking to anyone who wanted to talk to me. I’d be absolutely wiping the floor with my roommates in beer pong. I was almost a completely different person. Never mind the fact that I’d usually keep going and then get yelled at by said roomates for taking us through the most humiliating journey from win to defeat in history; we’re talking about before that.

See, I’ve been thinking about that stage two version of me a lot lately, because she’s in there somewhere. Alcohol simply lowers inhibitions, which means that, when I don’t have a million-bajillion walls up, that woman exists.

But in everyday life, she’s not usually allowed to come out and play.

And, I mean, listen: farbeit from me to glorify alcohol or alcoholism or drinking to excess; now, if I drink more than three drinks in a day I’m demanding to go to bed by 5:30. I don’t enjoy the headaches or the weird feeling in my stomach after I’ve had alcohol either. So I’ll drink, but I’m very intentional about how much and for how long. I’m too old to rage. My kids make me rage enough.

BUT.

It does bring to light, for me anyway, how many of us only half believe in ourselves. Even the most confident of us will hold back because we’ve been taught to doubt far more than we’ve been taught to trust. Sometimes, that’s good, like when some horribly inebriated genius decides to believe that they can fly from the top of a very high building. But sometimes — those times where we believe that we aren’t enough, or that we shouldn’t be speaking, or that we don’t belong — it isn’t.

And we can wish and hope all we want every day of our lives that we can break through those barriers and march around with the same bravado while we’re completely stone sober, but that isn’t enough. Wishing and hoping won’t do it.

I’ve realized that, to stop half-believing, you have to fully commit to doing self-work (I know; ew). You have to be willing to push through those walls you’ve learned to put up, and to shrug it off when the real you isn’t accepted. You have to be okay with leaning into your weirdness, and sometimes completely ignoring the little voice in your head that’s like “NOBODY LIKES YOU AND YOU ARE GOOD AT NOTHING.” You have to be willing to approach everything like it’s doable. And most of us have been told that we’re not allowed to do that.

I’m not saying this as if I’ve already reaching this nirvana, because I haven’t. I’m still learning that not everything needs to be approached like it’s going to attack me. I still hear a little voice in the back of my head telling me that no one is listening or that no one cares. I’m still consistently feeling like I’m floundering and going nowhere, when I’m probably not. That’s all just a part of my brain as it is yours.

But I think we owe it to ourselves to try to find that version of us, to allow it to march around as if we’ve just downed three Long Island Iced Teas, to understand that temperance of ego isn’t the same as playing oneself down or denying your talents. So I’m going to keep working at it. And I hope you do, too. Because then maybe we can actually live in a world of people who fully believe in themselves, and who don’t need other people — or substances — to show them just how many magical things they’re capable of.

And wouldn’t that be one hell of a world to live in?