To make a long story short, I was starving and I accidentally ended up drunk at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. If you want to do the math, that means I’m drunk right now.

It’s 95 degrees outside. Well, it’s 88 degrees outside, but it said it was 95 degrees outside before my digital thermometer refreshed and that’s what it feels like. I’d been struggling with the idea of going across the street to get Mexican food take-out for about two hours (it’s hot, I’m lazy, and I don’t owe anyone any excuses which is good because these are terrible ones) when finally my stomach finally began digesting itself and I was forced to do something about it, so I went to the restaurant. After phoning my order in ahead, of course. “I don’t like to be kept waiting!” — Hermoine Granger as Bellatrix Lestrange. You know. Or I hope you do, because I don’t.

Anyway, while picking up my meal, I purchased a Coke. A Mexican bottled Coke that doesn’t have a twist-off top. If you’re not completely challenged by life, this probably wouldn’t have been a problem for you, but it quickly became my biggest problem — once I got back to my apartment, I realized there was no way to drink my Coke. And of course I couldn’t find my bottle opener — do you honestly think I put things back in drawers like an adult? Do you even read my blog?

I tried opening it with a lighter and that lasted until I somehow cut three of my fingers.

I was completely sober at the time of injury.

Like I said, life is a challenge for me.

So I had to move on and find something else to drink in the apartment — the Coke was out for obvious reasons and tap water was out because it’s so cloudy it almost looks like skim milk, so I’m pretty sure it’s toxic. My only other option was the lone Shock Top, a beer, nice and frosty nestled in the refrigerator. Of course I drank it!

The thing is, I don’t weigh all that much and I hadn’t eaten in about 36 hours and I was really thirsty. A few gulps and it was gone. A few minutes and I suddenly felt very attractive, so I knew something was up.

If it helps my character at all, I have a very early-morning job and I’ve already clocked in and out for the day.

We’re campaigning beside you for president and vice-president. We’re still your secretaries, but some of us are signing your paychecks. We’re asking you out on dates and we’re picking up the tab at the end of the evening. We’re leading ladies, and you accept the invitations to our premieres. We sit in front of, next to, and behind you in class. We’re doing shots of Jameson adjacent to you at the bar we both paid the same cover charge to get into. From the outside looking in, it would appear as though the battle of the sexes has plateaued. But from the inside looking out, it’s a fucking disaster.

We aren’t your equals. We’re not even close. We’re Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill and we’re watching you send it tumbling back down into the quarry where we once again try to force it up the mountain in futility.

First Indiana. Then Wisconsin. Then Texas. Then Ohio. In recent months, all of these states have attempted to pass or have passed bills meant to restrict women’s sexual and reproductive rights. And now, New Hampshire, the “live free or die” state of all places, has cut Planned Parenthood’s funding by $1.8 million. Numbers don’t always get the message across, so maybe this will: Planned Parenthood has been forced to stop providing birth control pills and other contraceptives in New Hampshire, a change that will affect 120 low-income women in New Hampshire daily.

Again, we find ourselves as women in front of the gavel and under the gauntlet. As a society, we have moved beyond the tired practice of shaming women for leading irresponsible, public, or less conventional sex lives to shaming us for having sex at all.

Granted, you have no problem masturbating to us or fucking us. Some of you have no qualms about raping us. In fact, it is only when we want to harness our own sexuality that you take any issue with us. By harness, I mean definitively choose who we want to sleep with. No, we’re not a bitch because we choose not to go home with you after you buy us a drink we didn’t ask for at a nightclub. By harness, I mean choose whether or not we want to carry our pregnancy to term. No, we’re not cold-hearted because, for whatever reason, we do not want to give birth. By harness, I mean choose to protect ourselves against unwanted pregnancies and/or STDs with our contraceptive(s) of choice. No, we’re not vile because we want to have a say in what goes into and comes out of us. Thanks anyway though.

And so we are, somehow, still less than. We are undeserving to you of these choices. If you could have it your way — and you do — the only choice we should have is the one you’ve made. New Hampshire council members know there is a reason why some women visit Planned Parenthood for their contraceptives, their check-ups, and their medical procedures — because they cannot afford to go elsewhere. And now, they have nowhere to go.

Does a lower socioeconomic standing really translate to a lower level of autonomy, even at the most fundamental level? If the citizens of this country are not afforded every last ability and opportunity to take their bodies, their health, their safety, and their lives into their own hands, then we’ve all failed.

Something really terrifying that I always notice when I’m up in the morning and I don’t have to work is how many people are jogging or biking for exercise — they are electing to do this — down the side of the street. Everybody is doing it.

The worst part is this doesn’t even include people who get their cardio in at the gym, or delusional Shredheads whose knees are going to hate them in a few years, or evening power-walkers, or neon-clad people who congregate in the park and stretch for half an hour and then feel accomplished.

Like I said, everyone is doing it. Exercising, I mean. Everyone but me. Currently, my health takes up very little space in my mental inbox.

The only exercise I get is angrily marching to and from the parking lot that’s a block away from my apartment twice a day (more if someone invites me somewhere). I used to run around wildly at work, hoping my efforts would be recognized, but they weren’t. So now I walk to all of my work-related destinations. Slowly.

And I’m not one of those people who can just order a salad at Panera and only eat half of it and feel satisfied. No, I want a sandwich and some soup with baguettes for both sides, please. Anyway, the cashier always stares at me in bewilderment, as if to say — except they actually do say this — “You mean you want half a sandwich and the soup? Like, the ‘You Pick Two’?” And I’m all, “No, like, I picked my two. I want the full sandwich and the soup. And that croissant over there looks really good. Yes, I still want the baguettes.” I’m really into bread, okay? And this is a restaurant! I wouldn’t have bothered making the annoying left-hand turn across three lanes of traffic with no signal to get here if I wasn’t actually hungry, so you can put your gavel down any time now.

The one thing I’ve never been able to comprehend is that people legitimately enjoy working out. The last time I went for a run, I made it about three hundred feet until I was just like, no. And then I walked the rest of the way, all the while not entirely being able to navigate the sidewalk because I was seeing intense black spots and I wasn’t really getting enough oxygen, and that was my attempt at exercise for the year. Literally. It’s been a year.

And I kind of assumed everyone else was like me, a long-time hater of movement. But some people like to sweat, and I’m jealous. I want to want to sweat, too. I want to come up behind people at the crosswalk, softly breathing even though I’m on mile four, my ponytail somehow swishing even though I’m standing still, and sprint right past them because I have made a decision to run and I’m going to stick to it. Then I’ll come home, collapse on a chair, and sip out of my water bottle while I think about how healthy and fantastic I feel. And then I’ll have a glass of wine, even if it’s ten in the morning.

Maybe next year.

One life skill I’ll never have totally down is eye contact. I just don’t get it.

When I was 14, I went on a date to the movies with this guy I thought was vaguely cute. He shaved his legs because he was a biker, but it was fine. It showed commitment. Plus, he was on a date with me, the girl whose hair texture still hadn’t fully recovered from her seventh grade perm, so I wasn’t exactly in any position to be picky. As the movie progressed, so did the rate at which he kept popping breath mints — a sure sign that he was ready to get it in. “It” being his tongue. In my mouth.

I sensed it coming, and I was having a diva-scale freakout in my head. I had kissed guys before, being the good mix of modern/confused girl that I was and continue to be, but for some reason I just really didn’t want to kiss this dude. So I sat with my eyes firmly focused on the film, all the while thinking please don’t kiss me please don’t kiss me please don’t kiss me. And it worked! He never made his move. All because I didn’t look at him. Score. For me, anyway.

So I’m acquainted with the basics of eye contact and that the absence of it can get you out of unwanted make-outs. But that’s really where my expertise ends.

Beyond that, I don’t know what the appropriate amount is. Too much and you’re creepy. Too little and you’re also creepy. I once had an academic advisor who told me I looked like a flight risk, I think because I didn’t make enough eye contact, and I decided I liked that. She’s doing her thing again, I romantically thought people would think about me. Is she going to stay or is she going to go? It would be my trademark, these untrainable, unreadable, mystifying eyes of mine.

But it didn’t end up panning out anything like my fantasy. Since no one ever taught me the proper staring parameters, I end up gazing at strangers like I’m a really bad private investigator and ignoring my company’s eyes in favor of windows, my phone, or their bad haircut. I can’t help it.

Human interaction is so difficult.

What came first — the adult or the adult apartment?

I just don’t think you can be an adult until you’re living in an adult environment, so I think it’s high time that we put our spray-painted furniture up for grabs on Craigslist, move out of our studios, and kick off this journey to our bleak futures with an adult apartment. The rest will come with time. Or with wine, a beverage highly favored by adults such as yourself. As you can see, there’s no losing team in this game.

First, you’re going to need a garden. If you’re an underachiever, some kitchen herbs and various scattered plants will suffice. For years, adults have been deeply enamored with flora and it’s no time to break that tradition. Plants show that not only are you a friend to the earth, a very grown-up commitment to make because going green is a total drag, but also that you can care for something other than yourself. If you can keep a plant alive, you can do anything. It’s literally science.

The New York Times is another essential addition to the adult apartment. It will serve as a statement piece, the statement being that you are in the know. However, you will never read it. Instead, you can keep doing what you’ve been doing — reading your news source of choice on your smartphone whenever something critical occurs — and just casually place the paper in a central location, such as atop your coffee table, for maximum exposure to guests. You don’t have to worry about anyone blowing your cover because no one actually reads the newspaper — it’s kind of like the opposite of sex in that nobody does it, but everybody talks about it. If you don’t believe me, just ask anyone you know to point to a country that doesn’t border the United States and isn’t an island on a map. See? They have no clue what’s happening! To your advantage, not everyone is aware of this yet and just assumes the rest of the world is more in the know than they are. This is hardly the case, but with this method, you’ll have everyone fooled. Try it!

If your apartment needs more stuff, consider books that no one has read cover to cover. Some acceptable choices include vineyard guides, art history and architectural commentaries, and journals of people who existed prior to your birth. The fact that they’re so boring and have no actual storyline will reveal your highly evolved level of patience, a virtue possessed by only a select few adults. If you’ve ever been in a legitimate adult’s home, you know exactly the type of library collection I’m talking about. It’s time to get one of your own. Welcome to the inner circle.

One thing that really sets young adults and actual adults apart is whether or not they possess a set of “good” plates, so you’re going to need some of those. Naturally, you should no longer have any plastic dinnerware, so make sure everything in your cabinets is totally breakable. I don’t know why this detail is important, just that it is. Trust. (Yet another adult virtue! Look at you, maturing by the second.)

Another adult apartment must-have are objects from a foreign land. If you’ve never actually been to a foreign land, a lot of things are made in China and Italy, so it shouldn’t be too hard. Try Pier 1. It’s important that these objects stand out against the rest of your decor, however, and that your apartment doesn’t begin to resemble a museum, as you don’t want to look like a poseur. These objects will no doubt lend credibility to your stories and help solidify your authenticity as a well-traveled, wise individual. If at all possible, attempt to pass these pieces off as “handmade.” A few self-inflicted dents and chips with a hammer should help your story along if anything appears too new or perfect for the handmade thing to fly on its own. To keep nosy people away from discovering your mass-produced secret, be sure to warn them that whatever caught their attention is one-of-a-kind and extremely delicate.

While it’s okay to have a few prints around that can be traced back to your point-and-shoot, it’s vital that you have a large supply of professional photographs of yourself, yourself and your significant other, and yourself and your family throughout your home. Although having professional pictures taken is a widely dreaded event, the fact that you’re showcasing your ability to withstand such torture is one of the ultimate testaments to adulthood. It’s no fun, but true adults know when the party stops.

Finally, never sign a lease on an apartment that does not have a guest bedroom. Having a guest bedroom is perhaps the most imperative accessory an adult apartment can have. It sends a clear message that the days of couch and floor crashing are over. That those who wish to stay overnight must have a prior invitation. That you finally have a castle, and you are its queen. Plus, you’re going to need somewhere to hide all of your embarrassing non-adult things. I suggest under the bed.