For The Love Of Wine

A Story by CeeGee

Wine is my best friend.

There’s this sort of bittersweet feeling that accompanies every bottle of wine that I open, and by open, I mean that I open it and proceed to drink as much as I can before breaking down in hysteric tears over River Phoenix’s death 20 years ago and waking up 30 minutes before I have to leave for work the next morning.

I mean, in all seriousness, I tend to only show raw emotion after I have a sufficient amount of alcohol in me, and I swear, that’s not really a sign of alcoholism. More of a correlation, in my opinion. Especially with wine, that sweet elixir, the only redeeming factor about the existence of grapes in the first place. Wine is the Muggle equivalent of Veritaserum, and it rationalizes the need to weep uncontrollably at the end of Rebel Without A Cause.

Wine is also reason that I've texted my ex-fiance in desperation, begging him to take me back. Wine is the reason I've confessed love to people I don’t.

Bittersweet, epitomized. Like that last bonfire of the summer before you and your friends leave for college again, or that guy you broke up with, mutually of course (he was a total a*****e, don’t kid yourself anymore).

But when I hear that resounding little pop of the cork escaping the grasps of the bottleneck, and when that first wave of sweetness swims into my senses, I feel like somehow this bottle of wine will make things okay. Who cares if you told someone that you love them when all you miss is the sex? They probably won’t remember it either.

I've come to look forward to the moment when I discover my lips are stained purple, and I get a rush when I finally shift positions during a movie and my head spins. There’s a sort of… vibrancy in wine-drunkenness. It feels more mature than beer-drunk, more rich than Malibu-drunk.

I dive headfirst into a bottle of wine when there’s emotions struggling to burst forth. Without wine, I wouldn't be able to accurately misinterpret my crush’s texts or fully appreciate my dear little sister calling me to excitedly exclaim that she’s thiiiiiiiiis close to figuring out the meaning of life.

Without wine, sometimes I feel like I couldn't feel at all. And that’s not a problem, that’s a necessity.