I got my first tattoo on Memorial Day weekend when I was 21. It is a garter on my thigh made of symbols that still mean something to me. It is a fertility symbol turned on its side and repeated. Fertility in flesh, thought, and ability. There's also a vesica pisces in the trinity form. Growing up, I saw it in bibles. It signified the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. During that short time when I wanted to be Wiccan, I saw the same symbol but it symbolized the Mother, Maiden and Crone. The vesica pisces itself is a symbol that resembles a vagina. It was a lesson that symbols are what we make of them, and religions mutate into whatever the person in charge wants them to be. It's up to me to value what I want and uphold traditions as I see their value. It was done by a friend's step-dad on their living room floor with a homemade tattoo gun running on the motor of a tape cassette Walkman. (Yes, I'm aware of how old and irresponsible that makes me.) He learned how to create this tattoo gun in jail, and the transfer was made with a stick of deodorant. There was a lot of scraping and line drawing. Newer guns poke quickly and repeatedly, depositing ink in pretty scars. It was $75 and paid for by a friend. The most painful part was the back of my thigh. The shaking was uncontrollable. It was one of many acts of rebellion that would define my adolescence. For the record, I'm back to Christianity. You might not think so in the many thoughts I share, but you would see it in the actions I refuse to take, no matter how much I want to. That's the part of my belief in which I get as much as I give in meaning and in blessings.
My second tattoo was a last minute decision to tattoo my husband's name on my arm after we had shared 7 years and 3 kids. It happened on the weekend of my Grandmother's funeral. The tattoo gun numbed the pain and guilt of my loss. I don't remember the pain as much as my difficulty in holding still and not watching the work. One day soon I'll have that one covered.
My third tattoo came almost a year ago. It was shortly after my husband said he was done with our marriage. It was the weekend after Easter. He decided I wasn't invited to visit his family for Easter for the first time in the 15 years I had known him. We went to church separately and before I left the sanctuary, he had my kids piled into his sister's car and they were leaving the parking lot to head out of town. I spent that Sunday wandering around with a greater sense of anomie than I had ever experienced in my life. I ate Vietnamese food alone, because comfort always looks like pho. I went to see Insurgent alone. I was okay at first, being the only one in the theater for a long time. Later, couples filed in, holding hands and I cried into my popcorn. That was when I decided I would get inked the next Sunday. I drove around, looking for a shop and found an artist willing to do my ink in just a few hours. It would've been a few hours, but she kept dragging it out and it took hours longer than I expected. The artist was inked in very nearly every place imaginable. She talked about her days as a stripper and her inability to wear a bra. I told her about my surrogate pregnancies and she told me about her infertility. It seemed fitting that she would give me my tattoo because only she would understand my peace with the shifting form of my aging body. There is something so profound about the combination of physical and emotional pain being preserved in an image below your skin where the pain ebbs and flows long after people stop looking.
I emailed her pictures I had wanted for inspiration. They were butterflies in curls and lines. My profile picture is one of the pictures I sent her. I wanted an underboob and I got it. If I want it seen while standing, I have to lift my breasts. After 6 pregnancies and at least 3 years of breastfeeding, they lay flat like floppy slabs of meat. I know, attractive, right? When I'm on my back, they fall aside and away to the path of least gravitational resistance. Her firm hand bruised my ribs and the most painful part was my sternum. When I'm home alone, I walk around mainly naked so I can see it. I trace the lines of ink and feel the slightly raised scars and it brings me a sense of peace.
I remember my husband being obsessed with the idea I was cheating on him that night. I wasn't going to show him the tattoo but I couldn't see him in so much pain, no matter what he was causing me. We were still having random hate sex from time to time and it wasn't the body worship I craved. He was feeling guilt and wanted to punish me and have sentimental ideas of the last time being each last time we had. The sex we had was for him. I wanted to convince him our sex could change. I could be the goddess to him I once was. I could be the person who wasn't exhausted and ignored and pretended to want it, knowing it was the snuggle I wanted more than the sex. There is no more sex and I can be grateful for that. When it was good, it was amazing, but the shame I felt for forcing a feeling I couldn't feel wasn't always worth it.
There's just me and my ink and my random nakedness and that's exactly how I like it lately. Curves, dips, scars, soft wrinkles, bad knees, a belly that can be lifted by the handful above a C-section scar, one or two gray wiry strands of hair in random and unplanned places and all.