Tattoos

For some reason, I have been thinking about tattoos a lot recently. Maybe it is because I am contemplating my next one. Maybe it is because Justin is in the middle of the a full back piece. I don’t know. I love tattoos. As I was driving home from lunch, with an article that I had shared on Facebook still fresh in my mind, I begin to define why I liked tattoos so much. I got my first tattoo when I was 22. I got one purple star on my right hip. I thought I looked uneven, so I went back the next month to get a matching star on the other hip. I do want to admit, that my current 27 year old self, would not get matching stars on her hips. But I still love my stars, when I notice them. (After time, tattoos just become a part of who you are, and you kind of forget them.) So no, I wouldn’t get stars today, but I did at 22 and I am okay with that. Here’s why. Whenever I look at my stars, I am instantly reminded of the 22 year old that got them. I got them in January. I had been in Atlanta for only two months. I was clueless. All of sudden, I left a small town in Alabama, and I had thrown myself into the big city. I was at a real job with real adult responsibilities. I was searching for who I could be or what I wanted to be. I knew very few people, and had no friends here. I didn’t know if I could make it, or how not to make it. I was ready for anything, and prepared for nothing. That was the 22 year old girl that got stars on her hips, and I like thinking of her when I look in the mirror. My other tattoos have similar stories. They remind me of a specific time and place in my life. And when I look at them now, I see them as a single portrait of who I was at the time. A portrait that will always stay with me, reminding me who I am and where I have come from. So you see, when I think of my tattoos as a representation of me, how can I be ashamed of them or regret them? I love fielding the question, what are you going to look like when you are 80 years old and you have all these tattoos. Well, I have seen a lot of eighty year olds, and I have never wanted to see any of them naked, tattoos or not! So for the person(s) who will have to see me naked at 80, I will go ahead and apologize to you. Not because I have tattoos, but because I will be old and wrinkly. At least, you can have some fun imagining the stories behind my tattoos.