The second that doctor sliced me open and grabbed her, pulled her out and held her up to the light, I felt a bone-crushing, spooky love that I’d never felt before. My arms were splayed on either side of my body and I couldn’t move them, but they held her cheek up to mine and I felt her. I sobbed hysterically and so did she. That’s what it felt like to meet my daughter.

I am a good mother. Today, she is 15 months old, so being good means that I read to her, attempt to feed her vegetables, build tall towers of blocks for her to knock down, and love her with a fierceness that she never, ever questions. It also means that I never take a drink.

Drinking made me feel like I fit into my own skin. I was born with a too-big, too-clunky, too-awkward spirit, an amorphous thing that a god I don’t believe in jammed into a disproportionate, human-shaped meat. Two arms, two legs; all the parts were there, but it felt all wrong.

Taking a drink was like easing into myself. The bitter taste, the slow burn in the throat, the warming in the stomach, and then the release of discomfort, passing in a slow howl, like puncturing a tire. I drank because it made the world make sense, and I made sense in it.