Reflections on my first tattoo.
On Sunday as we walk to tea, my brother tells me he’s getting a new tattoo, and asks if I want to tag along. Do I want to tag along? I question him.
“I wanna get one too!” I say. He laughs and looks at me like, yeah right.
But it’s true. I’ve wanted a tattoo for years. My journals are littered haphazardly with messy drawings of butterflies and fruit and lines of poetry, tiny sketches of a disproportionate human frame adorned with pretty little objects. Maybe one on my shoulder, another on the inside of my wrist. Definitely one on my forearm. I have mapped them out, time and again, only to be caught by fear. I can’t possibly, I reason with myself. Tattoos are impractical, they’re permanent. They hurt. And besides–I don’t fit the bill.
Maybe that’s partly why I’ve wanted one so badly. I don’t look like the type of person who has tattoos. There is something to that, I’ve found; something fun about surprising people with who I am, testing the limits of what they imagine me to be. A friend used to say I like the shock of it–dressing the part of the good girl, but with the dirtiest of mouths. I’ve never denied it.
But mostly I think it’s beautiful making our bodies, our lives, a work of art. It’s why I love curating my closet and decorating my apartment. It’s why I’m constantly trying to romanticize my life, creating soundtracks for each mood and phase and chapter, falling in love with people and places and things easily and eagerly. It’s how I get through my days, gathering up the little bits of wonder. That’s what we have in the end, isn’t it? Just little moments, strung together.
I always told myself I would have to want a particular tattoo for at least a year before getting it inked on my body; this felt purposeful, responsible. But on Sunday after we get home from tea, Josh sends me a link to the tattoo artist’s work, and I spot it. My first tattoo.
It seems this is how things go for me. I get a gut feeling. When I do, it’s strong. Very strong. It becomes all I can feel. Apparently it’s part of my Human Design, if you believe in that sort of thing. Whatever it is, when I know, I know. And when I don’t know . . . well, that’s when everything becomes a disaster. Things fall apart and unravel and get knotted up in a web I can’t untangle without getting myself, and sometimes others, stuck in it all. That’s not to say my gut is always right–it’s not a magic 8 ball, after all. But there is a calm that washes over me, when I’ve found a piece of the puzzle.
“Ask Maia if she has time for this one,” I text my brother, accompanied by a screenshot of the cutest little tattoo I’ve ever laid eyes on.
The sketch speaks to me at once. A ribbon tied in a bow sits atop an oval mirror, which glistens with a tiny sparkle. The bow looks as if it’s almost in motion, asymmetrical in its draped arrangement. It is delicate but commanding, girlish in nature, with a sophisticated edge. I am drawn in by the domestic, feminine elements, and the idea of the mirror as a tool for self-reflection, bouncing back both light and the world around us with honesty. It reminds me of my dollhouse–the nickname I’ve chosen for my sweet, sunny apartment I am outfitting in bows and pastels and florals; I am making a sanctuary for myself here. It feels timely to commemorate it.
Maia’s design is based on a painting called The Break of Day by Surrealist artist, Paul Delvaux. I study the artwork in depth, mesmerized by the haunting, powerful way four nude, womanly figures, with tree trunks as legs, are arranged around a bow-adorned mirror, situated on a brick column. But what’s most remarkable is the fifth woman, shown only in the reflection of her breast in the mirror. She exists outside the painting, and it’s implied we are seeing the scene from her view. I’m instantly enamored with Delvaux’s composition, which seems to push back on the concept of the male gaze.
“I love doing first tattoos,” Maia tells me as she preps my upper arm.
I take a couple deep breaths as discreetly as possible, not wanting to admit to myself I am nervous. Not of anything besides the potential pain, which she’s assured me will be minimal. But I don’t know what to expect. I pinch my finger and wait. My brother starts filming, and then I hear Maia turn on the buzzy needle, feel it press into my skin for the first time; the calm washes over me once more.
The gut feeling. This is for me.
The thing I am learning about life is there are often no clearly right or wrong decisions. There are just decisions. And each of them will take us in another direction. Some of those directions are not for us, and some of them are.
When I was little, my parents would say, every decision has a consequence. I internalized this for a long time to mean something quite serious and scary, the words ringing in my ears whenever I was faced with choices. The idea of it would make me freeze, unable to move forward with confidence, lest I choose a decision with the “wrong” outcome. But I am less preoccupied with this now, more sure that, although there are undesirable consequences, another truth exists: no decision is permanent.
The irony of permanently marking my skin isn’t lost on me, but what isn’t permanent is who I am becoming. What I need or want may change countless times in my life–in fact, it will. Maybe right now, what I want is a tattoo. Maybe I need it as a way to always remember what this year, this place, means to me, a symbol of me stepping out on my own for the first time as an adult, untethered and unclouded. Maybe what I need is a way to look in my own mirror each day and remind myself: I am strong, beautiful in my self-expression, capable of not only caring for myself, but cherishing myself.
Now, I can see this on my arm, see the mirror with its pretty little bow reflected back at me in the mirrors in my dollhouse, my apartment, my own little slice of freedom, and know: I did this. I am doing this. Each day, I am living and breathing and growing in my darling little dollhouse. And it’s hard sometimes. But hard doesn’t have to mean it’s bad.
The morning after, I get on video with my mother. I show her my arm.
“You got it in a very visible place,” she comments.
Damn right I did.
