2002-09-13

32

Well, tomorrow I'll be 32. It's such a....nothing....birthday, 32. I only hope to Jesus H. Christ that 32 will be better than 31. I mean, it's got to be, yes?

Okay, perhaps I exaggerate when I say that the past year has been nothing short of an Olympic pile of suck. More to the point, it's the Year I Stopped Drinking. And, yeah, a lot of it was really painful and maddening and up the ass with all the words I try to avoid using because they're overused: angst, mania, despair, ennui.

But the last three months have also been really rewarding, like a light went on in June or so and stayed on: all I have to do is not drink. That's it. It is, at turns, both the easiest and the most difficult thing I now deal with on a daily basis. It's such a nothing thing to most people, the decision to either have a drink or to not have a drink, and depending on my mood, that knowledge is either infuriating or comforting. I believe, as fucked up as it sounds, that alcoholism is the best thing that ever happened to me, because it has forced me to live in my own head for the first time in years, and to deal with the scary stuff -- like performing or admitting I'm wrong or even just trying to have a conversation with someone at a club -- without heeding the impulse to artificially dull or enhance the experience.

So, no, 31 hasn't been a total wash by any stretch of the imagination. But -- holy fucking shit -- am I looking forward to 32.

lisamcc at 10:50 a.m.

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