I am at a Craft Beer Bar. It’s in a small warehouse type building. There’s a garage door in the middle of the front wall, an easy loading entrance for supplies or convenient air conditioning in the summer. The HVAC system hangs above our heads like a family of giant snakes dressed in black vinyl. They serve craft beers, mead, wine. We could get a cheese tray to match what we’re drinking. Any cheese would pair well with what I’m drinking (water).
I don’t drink…beer. I barely drink wine. Mead is okay, but I haven’t developed a taste for it. I try my husband’s drinks, smelling each offering and groping blindly for why it is familiar. Sometimes, I think I taste something sweet briefly before the powerful bitterness obliterates everything. I force myself to focus on the horrible aftertaste in search of some flavor besides gross. Stupid juvenile taste buds. I have nothing to add to their conversations about hops and mash and sour and other such lingo.
You should just drink more. Then you can actually have fun with us. You won’t get sick after just a couple of glasses. You can get trashed and do stupid stuff and have lots of embarrassing stories. Then the next day, you can throw up a lot and have a pounding migraine, because you don’t have enough of those days already.
My introvert was out tonight and it took a long time to shut her the eff up so I could enjoy myself.
Reader's Anonymous 
what they’re saying is not “you should drink more” it’s “you should’ve never started trying to rationalize things before you began to regret them. regress, young girl, back to your young adult days and do a bunch of stupid things simply to belong to a crowd”