Cheers.

The ball drop is a wake up call. It’s December 31^st soon to be January 1^st. I’m drunk as a skunk and getting into my car. It’s North Georgia, there are a few bars and a small town with local businesses, a diner, and some roads, roads that wind and suddenly catch up to you, and when they do catch up, you have to wonder how long it’s been since you felt something, and if you took a right or a left at the fork. At least, that’s what I always wondered when I realized I was driving. Nowadays I drive and I don’t even think about it. It’s a second sense, but back then I had to think about every little move with every little cell in my brain that remained undrunken or I would end up with another DUI and I wouldn’t break anyone’s heart because I didn’t have anybody. Wouldn’t even break my own. 

A car crash is a wake up call. Totaled mine, totaled theirs. A couple. It’s January 1^st. I’m drunk as a skunk being rolled into the ambulance. It’s North Georgia, there is a hospital about thirty minutes away. Highway roads, easy long open roads that sing road trip songs and leave the sun to shine in your eyes because you always seem to be driving west. At least that’s how it always felt for me going home from the Tractor and Feed Store every evening. Spending my undrunken cells counting tills, answering questions about parts and online orders and fertilizers and when the next livestock auction is. I had someone once, just like this couple. I don’t blame her for leaving. I don’t. 

Being alive is a wake up call. Or should be as the doctor said. Should have broken my neck, but didn’t. I was going sixty five, hit the couple perpendicular and they spun around. My truck hit the siding of a bridge. Lucky I didn’t fly right off they said. Lucky I didn’t kill anyone they said. Lucky. I was glad I didn’t kill anyone glad I wouldn’t have to live with a weight like that, but I couldn’t grasp the thought of being sober. What would that be like? Going to work without a buzz? How could I get through that? Coming home to no one without more than a buzz. Living in this empty country with nothing for me. This cold country where I am alone every year. Some people look to God, the doctor said. Even the doctors in Georgia are religious. Maybe they have to be. I didn’t drink because of God so I couldn’t stop because of God. God is not a wake up call. I never speak to the couple. Don’t even say I’m sorry. 

A second chance is a wake up call. I got sober in prison. I couldn’t stomach the moonshine. It’s harder than you imagine it to be. They had counselors there for a lot of us never enough of them, not near enough. Not near. I heard lots of people who were struggling to stay present in this world that forgets us like we are something that is easy to forget. Even people that I felt were more important than me, people who were fathers and husbands with more important jobs— postal workers and accountants. They said I was important to, not because of my job or my family or looks; but because I existed. I was in this world, the only one we ever have, and that was enough. I could be healthy; I could be sober from here on out. 

To be believed in is a wake up call. I walked to work every day. Nothing changed about the town. Nothing changed about the Mountains. I was sober but nothing changed. It was still boring, I was still alone, but I was sober. That was enough. And soon it wasn’t all I had to my name even though that is enough. I got a pet dog. A shepherd who walked to work with me every day and hung around the tractor store. Noah the shepherd. Customers asked me about him, then asked about me. Now, I play bridge with a few of them on Sunday. The shepherd comes plays with their dogs. They have families. I become good friends with them. I begin to grow my own tomatoes. It is easier than I thought. I go out to eat every Saturday night at a diner in town. I have coffee with my dessert. I don’t go to church. More churches than bars in this mountain town. I walk home and back. 

A bridge is a wake up call. I don’t own this bridge and every year I sit on it on December 31^st. I’m sober as a skunk. It’s a bridge made of wood in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia. It’s uncovered. It ices before the roads during the winters when we have ice, which are coming around more often now. The metal sidings are damaged on the westbound side. There is a moving creek below, no ice there. Ice can’t form on moving water here, not near cold enough. Not near. It is chilly though, tonight. Just myself, the pines and oaks, six bottles of Jameson, and a shepherd. I take a bottle, crack it open and listen to the bubbles of the creek. I pour one out, all of it into the creek below. I take a bottle, crack it open and listen to the bubbles of the creek. I pour one out, all of it into the creek below. I take a bottle, crack it open and listen to the bubbles of the creek. I pour one out, all of it into the creek below. I take a bottle, crack it open and listen to the bubbles of the creek. I pour one out, all of it into the creek below. I take a bottle, crack it open and listen to the bubbles of the creek. I pour one out, all of it into the creek below. I take a bottle, crack it open and listen to the bubbles of the creek. I pour one out, all of it into the creek below.

Six years sober is a wake up call. 

Cheers.