Ink & Impermanence
The recent wildfires in our community have me thinking about impermanence, and therefore permanence. I have practiced enough by now to know that everything is impermanent, of course, but the destruction left in the wake of the fires really illustrated the reality of that. And then the other day I noticed what I think was a new tattoo on the arm a colleague of mine and it brought to mind my own journey with ink and impermanence.
I have four tattoos. Actually, six if you count the places I’ve had tattooed twice. I would have more, I’d like to have more, but my last one spoiled me and now I feel like I would have to go back to North Carolina for all future inking. The artist who drew the cardinal on my forearm in Asheville last spring was truly gifted (thank you Pure Steam Tattoo). I learned so much from her about the art of tattooing, and I will never again google “tattoos near me” and send money by PayPal to the first place that pops up (even though that is precisely how I found her).
I am not sure what possessed me to get the first two tattoos when I was sixteen. Certainly there was an element of peer influence and also the allure of rebellion, and not just the sort of rebellion that would wound my careless parents.
A tattoo was the kind of rebellion that demonstrated my capacity to endure physical pain and perhaps even enjoy it.
And to have a permanent badge to prove it.
As I entered my 20’s and then graduated from university and got a “real” job I began to regret my decision to leave permanent evidence of my rebellion on my body. I was ashamed of my ink for many years. All three of the men I have had long term relationships with in my lifetime had an aversion to the permanence of tattoos. I used to hang my head and blame my rebellious 16-year-old self. My childhood best friend and I spent hours on the morning of my wedding trying to hide the tattoo on my right shoulder blade with copious amounts of foundation. For years I chose clothes for important occasions based on their potential to cover my tattoos.
The father of my children once asked me how I would explain my tattoos to our children when they asked. I knew what I was expected to say: I would tell them I wished I had never gotten them and that one should think long and hard before inking something permanent on their body. But that didn’t feel true.
Instead I realized that my tattoos were jubilant proof that I had survived an adolescence that was less than ideal by being independent, determined and courageous.
And that rebellious 16-year-old self hadn’t vanished. She was, and still is, an important part of me. I discovered that I didn’t actually regret getting my tattoos. Instead the source of my shame was trying to explain what they were to well-meaning acquaintances who didn’t know anything about me or my life when I was sixteen.
Interestingly, I don’t think my children have ever asked me about my tattoos (and they aren’t really the type to wonder silently). I think children have the capacity to love us exactly as we are without questioning how we became.
As I approached my 40th birthday I read somewhere that tattoos should be thought of as “decoration for the body we are inhabiting in this life”. This really resonated with me and liberated me from my inky prison of shame.
No wonder I struggled with explaining my tattoos, it was like trying to explain having shag carpeting in your living room in 2005. I started to wonder if, rather than hiding my tattoos, I could just redecorate.
Before long I was back in a tattoo parlour after a 24-year hiatus. And it turns out I absolutely could redecorate. So the year I turned 40 I re-inked my right shoulder blade and my right ankle. I replaced the relics of the early 1990’s with images more becoming of a 40-year-old mother of two. I enjoyed the process. I shared the experience with my best friend and we share a tattoo image now. And I felt like I had learned something important. My original tattoos are still there. Only I know how to find them. There are only the faintest traces, but my rebellious 16-year-old self knows exactly where they are and what they mean. And my forty-something self has no trouble explaining the beautiful but simplistic images that obscure them.
After that, I didn’t expect to ever get another tattoo. I thought I had closed the book on ink.
And then the strangest thing happened.
I was on a road trip with two friends and one of them mentioned getting a tattoo. I was immediately overcome with inspiration. I desperately wanted a tattoo and I realized that I wanted it to mark this particular time in my life. To be something between me and myself. The same thing happened last spring. While overcome with grief over the passing of a dear friend I was inspired to mark our friendship on my body. These last two tattoos have made me realize something about the permanence of marking with ink on our bodies. It seems like it might just be a way of leaving a message for our future self from our present self. An indelible mark that proves beyond a doubt who we were at that moment when the needle punctured our skin and scarred it with permanence. A way of choosing our scars as we navigate this life.
For me, my tattoos are not really for discussion. While I welcome admiration of them and I love the opportunity appreciate the artists who created them, I detest being asked what they mean. That is a question so intimate I wouldn’t want my best friends to ask, unless I volunteered. That might seem unfair, but a tattoo isn’t like a t-shirt or a pair of earrings.
My tattoos are an expression of my internal self on my external body and they don’t need to mean anything to anyone but me. To the rest of you they can just be decoration.
This body is impermanent. My 16-year-old rebellious self was impermanent. My 42-year-old self was impermanent. My dear friend’s life was impermanent. And the scars I’ve chosen on my body to remember them will fade and change as my body ages. But I will never regret decorating my body in their honour.