I have six tattoos. I’ve recently made an appointment for my seventh, just a few weeks after my fortieth birthday. There’s a list of them, tattoos I want to get, that keeps growing. After the one coming up in a couple months, I have another planned, and so on and so forth. When the list is complete, I’ll be at 9 or 10. But that’s now. I’m sure more will pop up.
I got my first tattoo at 19 or 20. I’ve heard people comment that you get tattoos in your 20’s when you’re young and stupid.
I didn’t get my next one until I was 37. I think people have this idea that I’m having some type of hipster-not-yet-mid-life crisis. I’m a married mother of two. I work in corporate America. I’m not supposed to be getting tattoos, if anything, I should be covering up the ones I got when I was young and stupid. I should be concerned about how they will look in 20 years, it’s not like gravity has suddenly become my friend, right? Tattoos have a certain stigma and, I don’t really need any more help standing out, do I?
But, this - the getting of tattoos - feels right. It feels like something I should be doing. It feels like something I need to do. It feels like who I am. One of the several things that I am.
I like that it’s something just for me. They don’t have anything to do with anyone else. They are messages for me and it doesn’t detract from them that other people can read some of them too.
I like the experience of having tattoos. It’s helped me to adjust my judgement goggles. If all the good stuff that is me exist under skin with tattoos, who’s to say the same thing isn’t happening with the guy who has the disc in his ears and the bone in his nose?
I’m also not worried about how they’ll look in 20 years. They’ll look like older tattoos. I have no guarantees of being around in 20 years. A hope, yes, but nothing in writing. It’s never been my plan to get the end of my life with a prettily packaged corpse. I don’t give a shit about gaining the admiration of the folks at the funeral home. I’m dead. If there’s ever a time in life where you shouldn’t give two fucks about what other people think, it’s your death.
I hate that YOLO shit. I really do. But those assholes are right. You only do live once. I’m taking this gift and am going to try to squeeze all that I can out of it, even if that makes other people uncomfortable.
I hope you find the courage to do the same.
