Seven summers ago, I got a pair of wings tattooed on my back, just a black outline. I got it done at Tribal Ways in Massachusetts and it was my second tattoo. I was 19 and about to go to college...leaving the nest.
At A Glance Author Annie Contact [email protected] When A week ago Location Savannah, GA I knew that part of what I wanted out of this tattoo, was for the wings to grow with me as I grew spiritually into someone who could fly on her own. I also knew that it was a common image for a tattoo, but that does not make it any less powerful for me. At that age, I didn't yet have the life experience to properly articulate this idea, but I knew it on some sort of abstract level. At that time, it was a big and expensive tattoo, and remains my biggest and most expensive to date.
As the years passed, I became extremely dissatisfied with many of my early tattoos and began undergoing removal, which I have written about on BME a lot. I find it healing to write about this process as I go through it, but I also hope that I can shed some light on the "other side of the fence", so to speak. I hope that people who enjoy tattoos can read it and understand how important it is to make good decisions. I also hope that people who experience the regret I did, will see that there is a way to turn that regret into something better. It's not easy, but then again, what is? Is it ever easy to express yourself exactly as you see fit, and present that image, unflinching, to the rest of the world no matter what it might look like to them? Somehow over these seven summers, it seems like it's gotten harder.
The longer I've spent time and money on slowly dissolving my old, bad ink, the more I have ached and yearned for something on my skin that will really, really speak for who I am now- and more importantly, who I will always be. My biggest problem with my older tattoos, many of which are in various [awkward] states of fading, is not that they no longer represent who I am. It's simply that they never represented who I was in the first place. They were not me. If I could have cut out the designs and given them to someone who might wear them better, I would have. It feels oddly wasteful to be putting so much money and time...into getting rid of something that cost money and took time.
Yet, throughout the past four years, as I've changed so many things about myself and how I live my life, I've always held onto the tattoos I do like; the ones that truly show little parts of me that don't make me defensive, angry, or sad. I see them in the mirror as survivors of a storm of self-loss, of flying far away from myself and then returning.
A few days ago, I was showing my friend a photo of the wings on my back. And he said, "You should get them finished." That was when the idea fell into place with a resounding click in my head. Just like that, I knew it was time to start figuring out what I wanted them to become, how I wanted them to grow. I know how I want them to be, in my mind's eye, and now it is time to make it real. I have bigger goals now than when I was 19, and I need bigger wings to fly higher.
Yet, I instinctively balked, fearing that I was being impulsive and treating the reworking of my 7-year old tattoo, as if it were a haircut. It was so easy for my friend to make that statement, but he doesn't know how it feels to get something "permanent" removed. A lump rose in my throat when I realized how badly I wanted something amazing and beautiful on my skin, instead of something incomplete, halted in time.
I have many friends here in Savannah who are happily, confidently tattooed with incredible artwork. Savannah is a great tattoo town and there are many talented artists here, at good prices too. I could easily be jealous of the beauty of my friends' ink, but I am not tattooed the way they are, and probably will not ever be. To be specific, they collect art on their skin, for art's sake; pursuing design and form before meaning. That's not to say that their work is meaningless, but simply that because they have so much of it, it has taken on a different context.
This is fine for some people, and I love to look at it...but I recognize a spiritual need within myself that I want to celebrate with my ink. It's hard for me to walk into a shop with a design that is a piece of my soul, of my heart, of my very being, and have it be this intense experience in my head, while my friends just casually go over to the shop on Sunday afternoons to get new work done. To add to the collection. If only because of what I have already been through, I just can't look at it that way...at least not yet.
Still, something has shifted within me and made me finally trust the idea of building upon what I already have, making it complete. In the past seven years, I have accomplished so much and have flown to so many places...New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Maine, home. As I continue the removal process, I want to begin to celebrate myself, so that I may come to terms with the past and the future. It's time for me to trust the choices that I make now, instead of wasting my energy regretting the choices I made then.