My Tattoos

 Like most young adults, I have collected a handful of tattoos. 

They have meaning, some deeper than others, but I love the joy that they have given me and I will never understand people that think we don't understand that tattoos are permanent parts of us. To be honest with you, at least for myself, the tattoos and their meanings have been a part of me longer than the ink has.  

Anyways, no one asked for this, but I wanted to share about the ones I have now and the ones I want to get eventually. I'm working on getting back into writing for myself, and what better way to do it.

My first tattoo is on my upper back, toward my shoulder blade on the right side. It's of a cartoon bluebird. Of all the meaningful things I could say about any of my tattoos, this one holds the most emotion for me. Growing up my grandad was one of my best friends, and part of our friendship was sitting outside on the back porch of the house he built singing. We would sing together, and I would swing, and I continue to sing and swing into adulthood any time I'm near a park with earbuds. It's great therapy. 

Our favorite song to sing was Zip-a-dee-doo-dah. So, naturally, I carry a bluebird on my shoulder everywhere I go, to remind me that there's always sunshine heading my way. It might sound lame or childish, but it's a piece of my grandad that I get to carry with me forever. I miss him with all of my heart, and even though the grief doesn't really sting like it used to, it's still there. This was a very good way to heal the hurt initially. I think he'd like it. 

My second tattoo was on impulse. My friends and I had money, time, and the tattoo shop was taking walk-ins. They got the sun and the moon, and they're sisters so it makes sense, and then I got shooting stars. So we have little themed tattoos together. It's one of my favorite memories with them. They have kids now and it'll be cool to tell their kids about it someday. 

My third is my personal favorite. There's an author, Sarah J Maas, who writes adult fantasy books that take place in lavish worlds with extraordinary things taking place. The last few years have been especially difficult, and back when one of my close friends lived at the beach, she gifted me a trio of books that changed my life. If you haven't read A Court of Thorns and Roses, it's at the top of my list. Two more books in the series have come out since then, and they are remarkable to say the least. 

Anyways, there are tattoos in the book series that deal with strength, luck, and glory. The markings are black and exist to give warriors hope in times of great trial. Needless to say, I have one on my forearm, a sigil from a city in the books. One of the best quotes from the series is about not letting the difficult days win out, and so I use the tattoo as a physical reminder to not let the hard days take me out. I am strong, even when I don't feel like it, and sometimes I just need to be reminded. 

I got my fourth tattoo the same day as the previous one, and for similar reasons. 

During the beginning of the pandemic, I watched a lot of TV. I also broke my leg in 2020, which lead to a lot of time on my ass, and so I watched even more TV. One of the shows I watched was Star Wars the Clone Wars. 

The pandemic was also a time of great spiritual deconstruction for me. I don't feel like going into detail about it right now-- it really is a lot and I don't wanna info dump about something even I don't fully understand myself yet-- but Star Wars aided in a lot of the healing from some religious trauma I didn't realize that I had. 

Spoiler alert for the Clone Wars, but there's a character in it named Ahsoka, and in the last seasons she is accused of crimes against her people that she didn't commit. She is eventually found innocent, and allowed to remain a part of the Jedi order, but the pain caused so much harm that she didn't see any value in remaining a part of it. 

So, on my left leg, I have her lightsaber hilts tattooed on me. With the quote from Rebels that says, "I am no Jedi" above them. 

It's a personal reminder to me that I escaped on the other side with myself intact. That sounds really dramatic, but as I have shared things with my friends and family, I realize that some of the ways people treated me under the guise of religion growing up were incredibly wrong. I have found strength in separating myself from all of the dogma and bullshit, and obviously I use fictional characters to heal, and so yeah. Ahsoka's lightsabers. 

I have some cool ideas for more tattoos. I want tattoos with all of my friends. 

I have some incredibly neat ideas for Dungeons and Dragons/MTG themed work that centers around dice, lands, and line work. Nothing planned out yet but I'm hopeful. 

Patrick wants to get some tattoos of his own; we'll see when that happens. I think that he'll end the summer with at least one!

Also-- if I could convince my mom to get matching tattoos with me? That might be the coolest thing ever. (Mom, if you're reading this, you really should consider it. Haha. Just kidding. Sort of??) 

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If you read this, thank you. 

I haven't felt like myself lately and some friends of mine, bless them, recommended writing and journaling to work through the big stuff. I used to do that all the time, but stopped, but now here I am again ranting online to strangers and friends and people who care and people who literally could not care less. 

It feels great! 

I don't know when I'll write again, or what I'll write about, but I'm glad that I feel safe enough in my own head to write again. I want to write a book, something lavish and hardback that I can sell at truck stops in WV because I live here and that's what you do when you write a book here evidently, but we'll see what comes of it. 

Thank y'all a bunch. 💜