Delicately Ironic

I have a beautiful, day-old hibiscus quarter sleeve on my left shoulder. I’ve been coveting this tattoo for a while. I was going to get it to celebrate my passing of derby minimums. But, I needed to do it now. I needed it to feel alive and defiantly declare that breaking me will only make me more beautiful.

The Japanese art of Kintsugi means “to repair with gold.” When a piece of pottery is broken, people use this ancient art to repair the piece using gold or silver. The understanding is that something is more beautiful and more valuable for having been broken.

Kintsugi is probably the closest representation of how I feel about my tattoos. About my life, really.

The hibiscus flower is incorporated in a tattoo for several reasons. One of the most common things it symbolizes is devotion. Often, it represents a love from which you have moved on.  In Malaysia, it represents courage and honor.

The most common symbol of a pink hibiscus is rare and delicate beauty. I like that one, because—while I am tough as hell—I am fragile too. My tattoo meaning is ironic: it represents fragility, but it takes a lot of pain and endurance to acquire it.

I read an article about tattooing that asked: If it didn’t hurt, would it mean as much? I think the answer to that is absolutely not. Enduring pain is something that is common in the human condition. But voluntarily choosing to endure pain in order to create something beautiful is brave. And kind of amazing.

Getting a tattoo is a lot like skating derby. You know it is going to hurt. And you do it anyway, because it is worth it. To steal a movie quote: If it was easy, everyone would do it. It's not a coincidence that many derby girls love tattoos.

I have been rewarded with some amazing things by enduring pain. My incredible kid, for example. I think this is why I put up with so much pain from the Earthquake. I believed (or at least hoped) that there would be something exceptionally beautiful and valuable that would be built from the broken pieces.

Well, I can’t always be right…

I have a large tattoo of a lotus on my left thigh. (I told my dad that I would only adorn and modify the left side of my body so he could stand on my right and pretend he had a normal daughter.) That beautiful flower grows by pushing itself through the mud to find the sunshine. I have pushed through a lot of mud. It keeps raining down on me. And somehow, I manage to find the sunlight.

I do like to think that my ink symbolizes amazing things. But for me, it is more than that. It is a way to reclaim myself. It helps make my world colorful. And it also helps create great beauty from great pain. When I look at my tattoo art, I remember the course of my life that led me to them. They are my life story.

They also remind me that I am tough enough to endure the pain and emerge with something quite amazing.

Permanent Ink

Tattoos make me happy.

And I needed some happy. I needed to feel like me again. So, this is how I spent my afternoon.

I wrote a few posts ago about some lessons that I've learned over the past few weeks. I think that the overarching theme to these lessons is that life is too short to miss out on being really happy. Part of finding that happiness--the part I think I neglected over the last few months--is being true to myself. Being the authentic me. And the authentic me needs color and beauty in my life.

Sometimes, you (and by you, I mean me) need to step outside yourself, take a deep breath, and remind yourself of who you are and who you want to be. And I am the girl who loves taking chances. I love being brave. I love my tattoos and piercings. I love when my nieces touch my new ink and giggle and think I'm cool.

And I love that those little girls are seeing that finding happiness is a beautiful thing.

Trypa- what?

Trypanophobia is the fear of needles.

About 20 percent of humans are needle-phobic. Being afraid of needles is actually a beneficial evolutionary trait. Thousands of years ago, the early humans learned that they had a greater chance for survival if they avoided stab wounds or punctures. If these humans fainted upon seeing a tool that could result in pierced flesh, they signaled that they were not a threat. Passing out when seeing something sharp and pointy allowed them to survive, thereby producing the next generation of fainting humans.

Needles can be someone’s downfall. Tough guy rocker Alice Cooper says that the only thing he is scared of is a needle. He explains, “I can put my head in a guillotine and play with a snake. But no needles!” In Game of Thrones, young Arya is given a sword that her brother Jon had made for her. Jon tells her that all the best swords have names. After being coached to stick her enemies with the pointy end, she names her sword Needle.

Fear of needles is actually in our blood, so to speak. Deep in our reptilian brains, we recognize needles as a threat. I have never really been afraid of needles. It’s a good thing too, because needles are now significant objects in my daily (or at least weekly) life.

It’s not fun giving myself the Avonex. I don’t yearn to get home so I can dose myself with interferon beta. I can play connect the dots with the bruises on my thighs at my injection sites.

The first month I took Avonex, I used a pre-filled syringe. Now I use the auto-injector pen, similar to the Epipen carried by people with severe allergies. The needle in the auto-injector is much smaller than the needle of the pre-filled version. And you cover the needle with part of the pen before you place it on your leg and push the button. Done and done.

But the syringe… I can’t tell you the high amount of intestinal fortitude I need to push that needle I am holding through my own skin. I am not afraid of needles. I’ve been inoculated, epidural-ed, pierced, and tattooed. I’ve given blood, where they stick a needle the size of a Capri Sun straw into your arm. I’ve gotten IVs. I’ve had a catheter in my arm for a week when I was receiving daily infusions.

I’m not afraid of needles. But holding a syringe in your own hand, piercing your own skin, pushing the plunger to administer the medicine with your own thumb... It’s hard to do. Even now--while I have transitioned to the Avonex auto-pen--I still have to stick myself with an old-school syringe when I give myself my B-12 shot. 

As much as I hate those needles loaded with medicine, I love, love the needles loaded with ink. I love my tattoos. I love getting tattooed. I love the day after getting the tattoo, when the colors are so bold. I love the healing process, where the fresh ink sheds its scab and emerges like a butterfly from the cocoon.

I really want another tattoo. I am trying to figure out how to break it to my dad. My current strategy is to talk him into going with me to get one of his own. I am not completely confident in this strategy. Maybe I should start working on my mom.

Isn’t it funny how the simple needle can generate so much fear, deliver so much health, create so much beauty. How many things in this world can we say that about?