I have one tattoo of the names of my children written in an alphabet that one of them made - child hieroglyphs, is how I think of it.
I wanted to put an eye tattoo on my back. I kept thinking, "I have to watch my back." Over and over, I thought it, like a trauma mantra. I paid an artist to design something for me. Black/white line drawing I wanted, for emphasis on no bullshit. She never got it right, though. It was either flirty girly looking or evil-eyed ugly. Then I dropped the idea. But all the while the betrayal times were 'over', my gut was telling me different.
I am the only self I've got. If I can't trust it, how do I live?
So then I returned to the idea of the tat, after. But the design(s) I had paid for weren't right. And I felt really shitty for a really long time also, and I didn't want to put shittyfeeling on my body forever. But I am stronger now, so I went to see Sunshine's artist (how does she know evvveryone??). She sees him once a month so that she is 'forever a work in progress'.
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| Sunshine: A Work in Progress |
His waitlist is normally 6 months and he usually only does huge pieces, but she talked him into hearing me out. I told him the whole story, Grandpa Ott and all, even about the sun in the water of the magic pond, the un-inverted feeling. "I want something that watches my back, but more like to TRUST MYSELF than to mistrust others. I need to listen to my own eyes."
He doodled as I talked. He turned tears into a water droplet, a tiny pond just big enough to reflect an Ott flower blooming above it.
