Permanent Reminder of a Temporary Feeling
Twelve Step Meetings are a living museum of former bad habits. Cigarettes dangle between middle and ring fingers because their index fingers and thumbs used to hold a rocks glass at the same time. Long sleeve shirts and jackets are sported in the middle of July because it’s the uniform of those trying to hide track marks. Chugging cups of bitter coffee and packing stale donuts into their mouths because the drinking has stopped, but the inability to moderate consumption has not… Even before you get to the salvation of anything “anonymous”, addicts wear the badges of the life that lead them to the life of drugs an alcohol.
Tattoos were always an easy indicator of what someone was running from. The strive for existential meaning is creative and broad if we go by the things people have printed on their bodies: a butterfly because you are spirited, a skull to show that you are tough, and for the deeply liberated… Grateful Dead Bear. Sometimes, if you look hard enough at the gothic cross on someone’s upper back, you’ll see that it’s covering up the name “Shannon.” Ah yes, the permanence of religion to offset the impermanence of Shannon.
The most common inkings I saw in rehab and proceeding support groups were the names of children. This one of those details about our people that outsiders will never understand, and they draw a line between “us” and “them” that is much deeper and much darker than a tattoo. The question from the audience is, “how can you shoot heroin into an arm with your child’s name written on it?!” My answer would be, “how could they not?”
Humans fear change. We may despise our monotonies, but we also nest in the safety of our routines. I’m not sure what anthropological brain fart has made us believe that permanence equates to happiness, but it seems to run in our blood like the desire to eat and breathe. Even when we reach a point of desperation that has us reaching for change, it’s a small change. You go through a bad break-up and your conclusion is “I need to make a change.” A change like reevaluating the non-negotiable standard you have for a potential partner would be a start. Switching to a position in your career that requires less time and effort outside of work hours so that you can be physically and emotionally available for the kind of relationship that you want would also be helpful. Taking steps to improve your self confidence and become able to draw firm lines with people that aren’t compatible so you don’t waste time on dead end romances would make a positive difference going forward. But, no. What massive, life-altering change do you make to soothe your emotional trauma? A haircut.
The fear of change is what I believe to be the largest contributing factor to continuing addiction. Even when things are terrible, even when we know we are killing ourselves, even when we have reached and/or surpassed our breaking point, we don’t want to leave our addiction nest. It’s so warm, and so cozy. Its familiar and pacifying and friendly. Addiction is like a home that can’t be broken and a family that can’t be angered. So, why would we ever want to leave it once we’re in it?
Of course, we know that addiction is none of those serene things once we escape it and get the proper perspective. You have to get some distance to see the truth; that addiction is not a pacifier, it’s a poison. Once you accomplish the massive change of getting sober, you start to fear change less and less. You don’t sweat the small stuff, and the big stuff becomes small stuff. In active addiction, if you lose your job, you think the universe is showing you that getting high is the only thing you can rely on. In recovery, you lose a job, you get another job. Not a big deal. Addiction takes your children away, you decide you didn’t deserve them anyway and you get even higher just to prove that point. In recovery, you make whatever changes the state says you need to regain custody and you makes those changes in an instant. No hesitation. In active addiction, you lose a relationship, and you not only want to get high about it, you want to get high enough to die. In recovery, a lover leaves and you say, “k bye.” Then eat a taco and go to bed. It’s not apathy, it’s the proven knowledge that change is inevitable, survivable, and frequently for the best.
As an addict, I pride myself on my ability to make massive changes. In fact, there isn’t one thing about me that has been left unchanged since I quit drinking. My health changed, my residence changed, my financial situation changed, my dress size changed, my daily routine changed, my sleep habits changed, my occupation changed, everything changed. Some of the changes were intentional on my part and some of the changes were thrust upon me. Either way, the changes came and I maintained my sober existence. So, if I pride myself on my changes, why did I get so annoyed the other night when a friend said to me, “you have changed.”
It was stated as a compliment—a profound, genuine compliment, but it rubbed me like sandpaper. When someone says, “you,” what exactly are they talking about? Are they talking about my life? Which used to be anger and poorly hidden vodka bottles, and now is a pile of books and the mild smell of cat pee. That is a positive and noticeable change that I am fine with people commenting on. Does “you” mean my attitude and my honesty? I put it all online for the public to devour. I want that change to be seen and used. People talk about that change to me a lot. Does “you” mean my body—my physical form? That’s a palpable change that can be seen and touched (with explicit permission). There’s no denying that change, because my ass obviously left, while my tits stuck around to party.
Maybe I run too hot and philosophical, but when someone says “you,” I assume they are referring my soul. And that hasn’t change one bit.
There is no successful way for an addict to defend themselves. When I try, people think that I am justifying my drinking or my addiction and I’m not. I am entrenched in this endless stalemate of vindicating my feelings before, during, and after the drunkenness. The original “me” has always been locked inside, even when the vessel was slurring and stumbling and screaming and blaming and sneaking and lying. “Me” was the girl hidden in the tower while Vodka the dragon was spewing fire and snapping its lethal tail and everyone who tried to rescue me.
Addiction is so nuanced that not even the addict themselves can understand it. The audience says, “how can you shoot heroin into an arm with your child’s name written on it?” I say, “how can they not?” Because I know what its like to love someone so much that you think you need to fade away entirely in order for them to have a good life. We love. We care. We want to do what’s best for everyone. But there’s this parasite that lives on syringes and necks of bottles and he says, “keep going. This is the only way it can end.” And we’re drunk, so we believe him.
Things change and I’m fine with that. I’m proficient at change now. I have to pout my lip and stomp my foot when I hear “you have changed,” because the fundamental things about me have stayed the same. I love. So hard. Too hard… I would die for my family, and in my backwards addict way, I was fully prepared to. I believe in laughter. It truly is the best medicine. I have empathy—not always for the right people, but who gets to say who is right and who is wrong? Why not want the best for everyone equally? I’m resilient; I have always been resilient. Before drinking was even a legal option for me, I was falling far and boomeranging right back like it was nothing.
My best features have gone dormant from time to time, but they have never left nor changed. I wish I could be proud of overcoming alcoholism, but that leads back to how I never should have been an alcoholic in the first place and then BOOM! – I have to capitalize on being a “changed” person when I don’t want to admit to any change at all. I hope that people understand that. No matter where my cigarette dangles or what my sleeves cover, my soul is my soul and it wants to be good. I don’t need a dragon tattoo to know that mine has been slain, and I’m not naïve enough to think it’ll be the last beast that traps me in a tower. I am both the damsel and the valiant knight, depending on what day it is, and sometimes, I am the beast. My life has changed a lot, for the better. In a dress, in a coma, with a sword, behind a shield, breathing fire, letting down my hair, at my core, I’m always—still-- little ol’ me.
