Last Sunday, before the hurricane hit, I was in Georgetown getting a new tattoo.

I knew that I wanted to get a tattoo in honor of my first year of sobriety, but as the year mark approached I couldn’t decide what I wanted or where I wanted it to be.  A friend and I had been talking on and off about him getting a tattoo.  He had never gotten one before and he wanted one, but he wasn’t totally sure.  We were hanging out one night, just after my year anniversary, and I told him that if her wanted a buddy to go with him, I would be on board for that.  Of course then he asked me what I was getting and I told him I didn’t know.

That night I went home and started really thinking about it.  What did I want?  I knew that I didn’t want my sobriety date (9/20/11 if you’re interested), which is commonly what you’ll see people in the program have tattooed somewhere.  I knew inside that that wasn’t what I wanted.  My sobriety date is a huge day in my life, one I will probably never forget.  But my first year of sobriety was so much more that just a date.  It wasn’t right.  I started thinking about endings and beginnings.  About how the last year of my life has been the most painful I’ve had to live through, and at the same time the most open and happy, a year full of more love than I could have imagined.  And after hours of looking at pictures of trees, birds, suns and all the crazy shit people tattoo onto themselves (seriously, it is so addicting looking at tattoos because people do ridiculous things, in both the cool and the foolish way), I decided that I wanted words.  But all the quotes that I felt applied to what I wanted to express were really long.  That’s what I get for being in love with Early Modern English poets.   By scrolling through Pinterest I had come across a few Harry Potter tattoos, and all of a sudden I knew exactly what I wanted.

My new tattoo says “I open at the close” with a 2 inch circle surrounding it.  It is above the inside of my left ankle.  And I am so in love with it.

Funny enough, plenty of people I know recognize the quote immediately.  It is what is inscribed on the Golden Snitch Dumbledore give to Harry in his will, in which Dumbledore had hidden the Resurrection Stone.  (I suppose I should say Spoiler Alert, but serious, if at this point you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, I can’t think that you care.)  And plenty of people have laughed good naturedly with a “Andrea you are such a dork” follow-up.  I am a dork, and I am completely okay with that.  I first read Harry Potter in 1998 when I was 14.  And I have loved each word ever since, without any apology.  But I picked this particular quote for more than fan-ish sentiment.

In a very real way, it is literally true.  I closed the bottle and my life opened up.  When I decided to end a long phase of my life, to stop drinking, I was small, cold and lost.  I could not see that I had anything left, and couldn’t imagine what would be there in the future.  And despite my worst fears, I became bigger, warmer, and found.  Day by day, even when it sucked, I could see how much better my life was without drinking.  I reconnected with old friends.  My relationships within my family became smoother.  I started to enjoy things again.  I opened up and let my life happen, in all its messiness.  When I ended what I had known for so long, I was given an opportunity to have something new, real, and ever growing.

But there is also the metaphorical sense in which I mean my tattoo.  I had to be willing to die.  By that I mean, I had to be willing to sacrifice, every single day, in ways that I couldn’t have imagine.  In order to stay sober I have to wake up and chose to correct my selfishness, to give myself to others, to do what is right even if it isn’t what I want.  To stay sober I cannot hold onto self-pity.  I cannot pretend that I am the most important person in the universe.  I have to life with a constant willingness to let go.  But to let go with purpose.  I have to see myself and my life as an instrument of God’s plan.  I might not need to battle a lunatic bent on genocide, but I have to face forever that darkness of my alcoholism, and do everything I can to combat it.

So my new tattoo is a reminder both of what I’ve achieved as well as what is yet to be accomplished.

And have I mentioned how much I love it?

(1 Year and 44 Days Sober)