I hate when people assume I am more drunk than I really am. I hate the feeling of someone looking at me and deciding that I need to be taken care of, when in reality, I am still very aware of myself. I know what is happening. I know where I am. I know who I am with. I know when someone is safe and when something feels off. Most of the time, what people mistake for drunkenness is just expression.
I am an expressive person. I feel things deeply, maybe more deeply than I usually let people see. In normal conversations, I often keep a lot to myself. I hold back thoughts, jokes, emotions, questions, even parts of my personality, because I know that not everyone knows what to do with intensity. Some people hear passion and think it is too much. Some people see joy and assume it is chaos. So I learned to manage myself. I learned to be careful with how much of me I reveal.
When I drink, I want to feel the human in me. I want to listen to music and actually hear it. I want to eat good food and laugh until my face hurts. I want to sit with people until late at night and ask them how they became who they are. I want to know what shaped them, what broke them, what saved them, what they still dream about when nobody is watching. Those are the moments that make me feel alive.
But that does not mean I am irresponsible. There is a difference between being alive in a moment and being lost in it. I have never blacked out. I have never wanted to drink to the point where I disappear from myself. Even when I am having fun, there is always a part of me that is watching the room. I am the one thinking about how people are getting home. I am the one noticing when someone is more drunk than they think. I am the one who can be laughing one second and completely serious the next if something feels wrong.
Freshman year, one of my friends was too drunk and a guy was trying to carry her home. Something about it did not feel right to me. I could have let it go. I could have told myself that it was not my responsibility. But I could not leave her like that. So I went up to him and stayed there. I talked to him for almost two hours while she sobered up. I talked to him about morals, about decency, about what it means to do the right thing when someone else is vulnerable. That is who I am when I drink too. Not just loud. Not just happy. Still aware. Still protective. Still guided by a sense of right and wrong.
I think a lot of my inner conflict comes from the gap between who I am and who I have always expected myself to be. I grew up in a strict Asian Christian household. I was taught to work hard, to be disciplined, to stay focused, to be the kind of son who made his family proud. My father had very high expectations for me because he believed I was bright, and I know he only wanted the best for me. I know so much of his advice was good. But there were also times when it felt like something inside of me was being pressed down. There was an excitement in life that I craved, a hunger for experience, for beauty, for music, for late nights, for friendship, for the world outside the life I was expected to live.
I would sneak out. I would do things behind my parents' backs. Not always because I wanted to be bad, but because I wanted to find out who I was when nobody was telling me who to be. And yet, even in that rebellion, I never felt like my heart was dark. I have always felt that, deep down, my heart is pure. I am kind. I am empathetic. I want to see the best in people. I want to believe that everyone is more than their worst moment.
My values are still rooted in Christianity. I try to stay pure. I try to live by what I believe. But there is also a part of me that feels pulled toward the pleasures of the world. I love having fun. I love beauty. I love thrill. I love the feeling of a night becoming a memory. But when I hold myself too tightly for too long, something in me starts reaching for color again. I start craving the parts of life that cannot be scheduled, measured, or neatly explained.
Then the high comes down, and I am left with myself. I start asking whether I am actually doing good. I think about the time I lost. I think about whether I went against my own principles. I think about God. I think about whether I am moving closer to Him or further away. Sometimes, when I feel close to God, I find a way to mess it up, and the next day I feel far from Him again. I feel guilty. I feel unworthy. I feel like I am standing outside the door of faith, wanting to come in, but ashamed of what I brought with me.
But I also know that this shame is not the full truth. Christianity teaches me that Jesus Christ died on the cross for sinners, not for people who had already perfected themselves. He paid the price I could not pay. God does not embrace me because I am flawless. He embraces me because He is merciful. That does not mean I should ignore my values or use grace as an excuse. It means I should stop running from Him every time I fall short.
As I get older, I think I am beginning to understand what I actually want. I want a full life. I want to travel with the woman I love and watch the sun fall over cities we have never seen before. I want quiet mornings in unfamiliar places, coffee in small streets, ocean air through open windows, and the kind of love that feels steady but still burns. I want to love passionately, not carelessly — to build a home that feels safe, but still have a life that feels wide.
I want adventure, but I also want somewhere to return to. I want faith not as a decoration in my life, but as the ground beneath it. I want peace that does not feel boring, discipline that does not feel like a prison, and a version of myself I can respect when the room is empty and nobody is watching.
I have tried to take as much from life as I could. I have loved under the lights of Paris and felt, for a moment, like the world was speaking in a language only the heart could understand. I have stood before beaches so beautiful they made silence feel like the only honest response. I have looked out from mountain peaks where the air felt thinner and the view was so vast it made my own problems feel both small and sacred.
I do not regret wanting to feel alive. But I am starting to realize that the life I truly want requires balance. It requires me to stop treating responsibility and excitement like enemies. It requires me to admit that I can love life without living carelessly, and I can follow God without becoming numb to the world He created.
So yes, I drink. Yes, I become expressive. Yes, I love fun and music and people and the temporary magic of a good night. But I am not careless. I am not unaware. I am not someone who needs to be saved from himself every time he becomes joyful. I am a person with thoughts, values, fears, guilt, faith, temptation, and a deep desire to become better.
Maybe the reason people misunderstand me is because they only see the outside. They see the laughter, the energy, the emotion. They see the version of me that wants everyone to feel comfortable, the version that keeps things light, the version that turns pain into a joke before anyone can ask where it came from. They do not see the constant inner conversation happening underneath it.
I do not openly talk about the darker parts of my life. I do not always tell people what broke me, what still weighs on me, what I am afraid of becoming, or how much ambition burns quietly inside of me. I keep most of that to myself. I would rather be the person people can lean on than the person who makes them worry. I would rather make the room feel lighter than admit how heavy my own thoughts can become.
There is a side of me that loves fun, but there is also a side of me where the music fades, the laughter disappears, and all that remains is focus. People do not always see that part. They do not see the boy who wanted to be the perfect son, the young man who wanted to taste the world, the man trying to carry his struggles without letting them spill onto everyone else, and the Christian who still wants to find his way back to God.
I am responsible because I think about these things. I am responsible because I care about people even when I am having fun. I am responsible because I know the difference between joy and destruction. And I am responsible because, even when I stray, I still want to come back to what is good.