Brilliant … But Bouncy

How Could Anyone Have Known?

During second semester of my freshman year, my core group of friends started to disintegrate. It was sort of a natural selection thing – we all found things in common with other people, and got closer to those people who were more like us.

Debbie was my best friend, hands down. We spent many nights in the lobby laughing our full heads off about absolutely nothing. Tears would stream down my face; my stomach ached; my face hurt from all the smiling. It happened so many times, my face and stomach muscles actually started to adjust. I loved Debbie to my core, and we had the same college major (Communications), so she and I spent a lot of time together away from the other girls.

Debbie and I decided that someday we’d get married and have children, but we’d live next door to one another so our kids could play together. We planned to have breakfast together every day so we would never lose touch. (We stayed in touch for the rest of our lives, and my son did meet her son, but Debbie died in 2017.)

At college, I ditched Debbie regularly in favor of bars and parties. After finding Amy – and her friend Chris – and her friend Holly – I had plenty of drinking buddies. For awhile, Chris and Amy and I drank together every night.

And Holly – who lived (gasp!) on another floor entirely – invited me to her room regularly to drink something called sloe gin. This stuff was so delicious, it was like drinking cherry candy. I’m not sure how much sloe gin I consumed, but after a few weeks I realized that I got stomach pains every time I drank it. Looking back, and after all I went through with my autoimmune disorder, I now suspect that my liver was screaming at me to stop – please STOP. So I didn’t drink sloe gin again, ever.

I also met Donna, who was petite and bright and understood things I didn’t – like why it was warmer on the other side of the street when the buildings blocked the wind. She may not have been a rocket scientist, but I was impressed. She could drink with me daily and still get her work done. Donna and I got so close by the end of freshman year, we decided to room together.

Donna didn’t realize what a mistake she was making. How could she have known?

How could anyone have known? It’s impossible to distinguish a young drinker from a young alcoholic. The future was so incredibly bright for everyone – and we were all too young to know where we’d really be in four years.

It was impossible to know, for example, that Debbie would never drink – and yet she’d die so young. It was impossible to know that Chris would have a life-altering car accident after freshman year that terrified me into muteness. It was impossible to know that Donna would graduate six months early and I wouldn’t remember her leaving until she reminded me at an alumni reunion. It was impossible to know that I’d never see Amy again after college. It was impossible to know that Holly would someday be my first connection on Facebook to all of my old college friends.

And it was impossible for anyone to know in college that I was one of the 10% of drinkers who had the gene for alcoholism, who wouldn’t quit until there were no other options. Even I didn’t know.