All in one. Isn’t that convenient. So a while back I started talking about how I thought that I was moving towards being ready to get a tattoo and because I had in my head a picture of what I wanted. Well, here is the start of it: http://people.tribe.net/justsomegirl/photos/0984ce8e-c235-4542-b889-1d77d41e4c57

Ok, the story:
It’s a girl standing in front of a willow tree that happens to be bearing apples. Stay with me for a bit. The willow tree is meant to represent one that grew in front of the house my family lived in when I was about 9. That is when my brother had just been released from the hospital after being in a coma for a long time and going through minimal rehabilitation before he was shunted off to permanent live-in facilities. During this period my brother spent a lot of his time trying to kill me because he hated me for being normal. He had a traumatic brain injury the likes of which rarely manages to survive at all, let alone recover to the degree he did. But he was never “normal”. He had ataxia (spel?) which means that his entire body shook at all times and due to the trachiotamy (spel?) he didn’t speak in anything resembling a normal fashion. He really hated me. So I would climb into that tree and cry. My mother was rarely home because she worked long hours trying her very best to keep a roof over our heads. My sister was about 22 and had a very young child (

So there is a girl standing in front of a tree. A tree that has all the meaning in the world to me. A tree that in many ways saved my soul, and maybe even my life some days as Tommy chased me with knives. The girl in the picture is me, but specifically also not me. She is just a girl. She is someone who is also searching. Around her legs are brambles that have cut her legs. In the brambles are the things she has had to work through: hate, anger, and self-doubt. In the tree, attached to the apples (I actually didn’t 100% intend the Garden of Eden imagery it just kind of happened) are banners that will show what she is working so hard to get to. She is reaching for a fruit that bears the word, “forgive”. Others in the tree are: hope, love, trust, faith, and lust because these are all things I want in my life more than I can say. They aren’t things that are easy to reach for. In fact, I have to work very hard but it is worth all the pain and discomfort the process entails. She is naked because she no longer has shame. There is nothing behind her that she is going to hide herself from in any way.

There is hope ahead.

So that’s the story behind this tattoo. Today while I was getting it I discovered that I had no fucking clue how much such a thing was going to hurt. OHMYGOD. And I process pain in two basic ways, I make noise or I move around a lot. Guess what I can’t do while getting a tattoo? Yeah, no moving. So this left crying and yelling out my agony. This was fine for the first part as my artist had wanted me to come in before shop hours because he is leaving town this afternoon. When people started arriving for their day their hostility and irritation were palpable in the air. They yelled back more than once, “When are you going to be done with this one?” and one woman when walking by stated, “No one else would put up with this crap.” It is my nightmare come true to have people be angry with me for processing pain in the only way I know how. This is something I have some serious baggage about. So I started crying nearly hysterically because I had to be silent and that lead to some really deep emotional pain on top of the physical pain. We stopped early. That is why there is no ink on the top part of my back. I couldn’t work through the pain in such a hostile environment. We have agreed that all of my future work will start hours before the shop opens so that there will be no disapproval in the air. He is a fabulous artist and I am really glad I chose him, but his co-workers kind of suck. When we were done and I was crying and crying he held me close and stroked my hair and told me that it’s ok to cry. It’s ok to let out pain. I really like him. He sees my fight against being honest with my pain. I’m glad that if I am going to have continued agony it will be with him guiding me through it.