Scar

 I have a scar on my right hand. On the palm, just below my ring finger. I had to get stitches for a cut I got from a broken beer bottle. A beer bottle that I broke. I broke it by picking it up and mashing against the wall of my apartment. It should be noted that this was not a beer that I was drinking. It was a bottle of Heineken that had been sitting on top of our television set, next to the Cheeto and our nasal douche. The Cheeto and the mostly empty Heineken were a lingering tribute to the party house that my roommate and I were running. 

I was drunk at the time that I smashed the bottle. The fact that I did not get drunk at our party pad was notable. I had been drinking at someone else's house. Heavily. Then I drove my roommate and myself back home. I shouldn't have been driving because I was drunk, and very upset. I was drunk because I had a lot of beer to drink. I was upset because once I got drunk, the demons associated with my lack of girlfriend came roaring to the surface. 

In retrospect, I get how deep the hole I was digging became and how abruptly it got that way. Not only was I prone to fits of rage, those fits of rage did nothing to make me any more attractive to any potential girlfriends out there on the horizon. The ride home and the subsequent race up the stairs did nothing to calm my nerves, or those of my roommate whose attempts to do just that for us both were further thwarted by my intermediate step. Once I got into the parking lot of our apartment building, I left the car out of gear, went around to the front bumper and gave my VW bug a shove. A big enough shove that my roommate was left trying to figure out whether he should chase me or the car as it began to roll back toward the street.

By the time he re-parked the car and made it upstairs behind me, I had a few extra minutes to work myself up into a tumultuous frenzy. He found me with the moldy Heineken in my hand, babbling incoherently about something or other. Which was about the time that I broke the beer bottle. And cut my hand. And my roommate had to drive me, in my car, to the emergency room.

Where I received stitches to close the wound, which resulted in the scar I have on my hand. 

That might have been the moment that caused me t reevaluate my drinking. It wasn't. I still had a couple of rungs to go on the ladder to the bottom. I have the scar to remind me. I have a girlfriend. She's my wife. But I don't drink anymore.