2003-05-12

Want

My sister got another tattoo last weekend -- her daughter's name on her right ring finger. It looks really fuckin' cool.

Man, I want a tattoo. It's time. I'm coming up on a full year of continuous sobriety, and as corny as it sounds, I sort of want to give myself that token, since I ain't real big on the whole card-and-medallion party thing.

On the other hand, though, it's also kind of emblematic of my whole problem to begin with: wanting something because I think it'll make me somehow cooler or happier or -- now -- more sober, like getting a tattoo will put everything in its proper place.

I've been reading my old journals from around 10 years ago and while a lot of it is just absolute crap, this line kind of stuck out: "I feel like I'm fueled all day on want, but driving around on four bald tires." And I sat there and said, "Pffft -- well, now, that's an addict." It's been kind of interesting to go back and read all these entries -- both here and on paper -- that quite literally begin with "I'm so hungover" -- I wonder if I really had any clue what I was getting myself into. I don't think I did, then. Didn't everyone drink as much as I did? Didn't lots of people go to work hungover? Isn't it kinda funny?

Probably around the time I turned 30 was when I started feeling these little tugs, you know, like, "I wonder if I'm going to be able to stop drinking," which in and of itself is sort of a tacit acknowledgment that something's not quite right. That was around the time I started reading Caroline Knapp and Anne Lamott, seeing that they'd both quit in their 30's and then mentally calculating how much time I had left before I had to confront my own drinking once and for all. I think I knew that I simply wasn't going to be able to stop the way "most people" are just able to stop.

You know, I don't buy into the "disease model" of addictive behavior 100%, and I still always kind of wince when I hear people describe basic human error as a "character defect," but I also do think that there is a degree of truth to the concept of an "addictive personality." I remember being able to stop smoking with no problem whatsoever and thinking -- somewhat smugly -- that I just didn't have an addictive personality, that I'd somehow managed to sidestep the behaviors that have plagued my family for generations, like I got the genetic hall pass and could therefore roam in and out of all those rooms at will. But then again, the first time I got drunk, I got blackout drunk. I never drank socially, even in a room full of people.

So, part of me wants a tattoo. The other part of me thinks there's no real purpose served by it when the whole thing I'm commemorating is just inherently internal. I'll letcha know, chickens.

lisamcc at 7:09 p.m.

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