A so-called friend of mine recently said something to me which completely set me off, if only because it was not the first time I'd heard such a thing. I am currently undergoing laser treatment for removal of 3 of my less-than-stellar tattoos. It is probably one of the most sensitive topics of my life these days and sometimes I find it hard to talk about because I constantly have mixed feelings about what I'm supposed to be feeling, or how I'm supposed to be thinking about all this tattoo stuff.
At A Glance Author spikeyannie Contact [email protected] When N/A Is it so wrong that a few pieces of bad art, excruciating pain, a week of blisters, and hundreds of dollars a treatment is not going to stop me from getting better tattoos someday? Is there something so flawed in that line of thought? As if all we can do with ourselves is discover and then promptly destroy anything we dislike, never daring to walk even close to that path again. As if we fall while we are flying and because of that fall, we never want to fly again for as long as we live.
I refuse to believe we are such simple creatures. Society teaches us to learn through fear and through negative reinforcement. Women who survive sex crimes are hesitant to become intimate ever again...but do they? Of course they do. When people undergo gastric bypass surgery, it's not as if they will never eat again because now they are terrified of making the same mistake. They won't- because they've learned, and not only that, but they took positive steps to improve upon themselves so that things will be better.
I can picture myself finally being done with the laser treatment; the relief that it's over, the money, the pain, and all of it so bittersweet. But I cannot picture myself walking away from something which captured me years ago and still does. I cannot picture myself simply saying, "That's it- I'm never getting tattooed again! What if I get something I don't like and I just go through this again?"
Apparently, that is how I'm supposed to feel. Apparently, I'm supposed to now hate tattoos and feel like such a better person now that my nasty skull n' bones tat on my chest is almost gone. Well, no. It doesn't work that way for everybody. Seeing the bad ink disappear, only makes me appreciate the good stuff on my skin, and the future works to come.
Perhaps to draw a similar analogy: Let's say you get a cancerous mole removed, and it's expensive and painful but entirely worth it. Does this mean you are never going to go out in the sun again because, "What if it happens again?"? What kind of a life is that? If that is truly how you are, then you never should have gone out in the sun in the first place. Of course it won't happen again, because you'll be careful, and this time around, you're educated.
I think of everything in my life which has been unnecessarily painful, expensive, or regretful, and I can't imagine giving any of it up altogether. If for every night I drank too much, I decided to stop going out at night, what kind of a life would I be allowing for myself and more importantly, what kind of lesson would I really be learning then? If because of a bad relationship or two, I decided to never become involved with a guy again, how will I ever find any sort of balance?
As impossible a balance as this seems, as difficult as it is for those either untattooed, unfamiliar with the pain of removal, or both...I can assure you all that if I were really against tattoos and really afraid of them, I probably would never have gotten them at all. I obviously can't speak for everyone who is going through the removal process, but I would go as far as to say that if they do feel differently than I do about tattoos in general, perhaps more negative, maybe they weren't meant to get tattooed at all. And maybe if that's the case, then they have all the right to continue their negative thinking about it and live in fear of another "mistake".
I was born premature and it was not easy for anybody: my parents, the doctors, me. But if my mother had said, "That's it, I'm never having another baby because look what happened", what kind of woman would she be? She recognized that sometimes these things happen, and then she had my younger brother. I can't imagine the life of someone who never gets back on the horse. I can't imagine ever saying that at the age of 24, I stopped getting tattoos forever just because once upon a time, I got a few bad ones. Sometimes, the only way we truly find ourselves is to fall a few times. And if we don't get up, how will we ever truly learn? It is true that if you don't learn from the past, you will be condemned to repeat it. But I also believe that if you doubt yourself because of a few mistakes, your past will govern your future forever.
I am more afraid of growing up to hate and regret and refuse to try new things, than I am of facing up to my mistakes and paying for the pain of a laser. Bad experiences and bad tattoos are not a drug or disease to be cured of; they are marks in time which exist to teach us however we choose to learn. Without pain, without bad art, without knowing what we are not, we will never learn of pleasure, of good art. Of what we are.
It's pretty lonely to feel like I'm the only one out there who sits alongside tearful girls with fading boyfriend's names, or solemn, "cleaned-up" businessmen, all cringing at their "old lives". And yet I'm the only one who still dares to love this artform despite the pain and money it has cost me. Maybe it's because when I fall, I get back up again. I just don't think anything is ever that simple, and it saddens me deeply that society has taught us otherwise.