My Tattoo

I finally got one.

I waited 22 years to get one, always too afraid of the needles or the pain or the fact that I didn't know what I wanted to get.  After all, once you've got a tattoo it's there FOREVER (unless you're rich and then have the money to remove it at your discretion ...).  So I fought with myself and tried to convince myself I didn't want it - but I couldn't stop thinking about it for years.

Then, one day, it came to me.  Exactly what I wanted - like an image in my mind.  A blue rose surrounded by flames.  Sounds corny, huh?  Most people so far have reacted with shock, disbelief, disapproval - although a few have reacted with love, interest and curiosity.  

But, the thing is - I didn't get it for anyone else.  I got it for ME.  Just like when I got my nose pierced in Lima.  It was what I needed to do at that moment.  

What most people don't realize is that the past month has been Hell for me.  I have been dealing with a relatively serious health crisis compounded by the fact that I am very far from home.  I have no family here - I had to rely on friends to stay with me when I went in for surgery.  And it wasn't just surgery - it was a type of surgery that left me feeling incredibly vulnerable.  An infected hair follicle where the infection moved into the gland - and stayed there, located right next to the crease of the leg.  To save me, they had to remove the gland.  The infections were getting worse and antibiotics only cured the symptoms, they didn't cure the cause.  I now have a scar almost two inches long.  I think it is ugly - grotesque even.  The surgeon did a good job - but there is still a scar.  It puckers and has left me malformed.  I remember the horror of being alone in my bathroom and removing the bandages for the first time - and how I cried that night.  How I wept from the stress and the fear and the medication.  

I got the tattoo soon after I found out I was going to have surgery, with a dear friend from the US to hold my hand.  It hurt like anything to get it - and I was terrified.  Immediately after I got it, I started panicking again, wondering if I had done the right thing, for the right reasons.  No one in my family has a tattoo (that I know of) and I was always aware of a certain stigma towards tattoos.  But for me, this tattoo symbolized all that I felt, all that I'd been through.

The tattoo itself is pretty small - not much bigger than a quarter.  The colors are a dark blue, yellow, orange and red.  Some people have said that it looks fake - I think it looks the way I wanted it to.  It sits proudly on the top of my foot, the flames originating from where I'm going and stretching into where I've been.  The blue rose bud, only slightly open, is like it's owner - just starting to bloom, to discover, to live.  There are a lot of layers to this rose and only a short time to explore them.  Some roses are delicate, and need a lot of care.  Some roses are hardy and will come back year after year without fail.  I've discovered that I fall somewhere in the middle but that I live in the heat of my own fire, sometimes warming and sometimes burning.

I've spent a long time trying to make sense of everything I have seen or done or experienced and up until now I've never found a way to represent it.

A blue rosebud in flames.  

Yeah, that's it.