My Tattoos & What They Mean
Let my tattoos be just as beautiful as my life
Inspired by this Substack a friend wrote:
My friends and I grew up hearing that our bodies are temples, but that temple is meant to honor someone else. A sacred place for that “someone else” to live in.
Eight years ago, I started piecing together a mosaic over my body. Each design is set in place with care, and my body feels like home. If my body is a temple, it's mine, and I'm covering it in graffiti. At least, that's one way to interpret it.
Thinking about my body without tattoos makes me chuckle. I was an art kid, and my hands and arms were covered in ink drawings since middle school. I would have swirls adoring my wrist and forearms, often retracing them to last longer than a day. Once my mom got a tattoo, I knew that one day I would have one too. My ex’s mom and stepdad are covered in them as well, showing me how I can have as many as I want. So, drawing on my skin was the closest I could get until I turned eighteen.
My tattoo collection started on my eighteenth birthday, as a gift from my mom. I went to the artist my ex’s parents were friends with, and it was a rushed experience. I wasn't sure what I wanted, but I also wasn't as prepared as I could've been. I looked through a flash book and told him I was between 2 designs and 2 colors. He decided to do one of each. I also chose my hip (and I couldn't have picked a more painful spot). My butterflies were born and I was officially tattooed! It would be a year later that I would realize he colored outside of one of the lines.
I have gotten at least one tattoo every year since, researching artists I feel drawn too and trust to do the design well. My next tattoo was a gift from my dad’s wife before I started college: a star on the side of my wrist. It serves as a memory of my childhood home, remembering the bright star I could see from the front door and then find in the sky when I was away. It was supposed to be a stick and poke, in his words, but he just made dots with a regular machine(?). I have not been tattooed by a cis man since.
My next session was a pair of tattoos. I turned large freckles into brown stars on my left arm. I wish I could be a star, and like to believe stardust is entangled in my skin cells. They're faded now, but a few have a gentle echo of brown. My skin absorbed those stars, now just a lovely memory.
The other tattoo is of a flower on my ankle I saw near my maternal grandparents’ home. It was my favorite place to be, able to frolic and daydream as a young child and adolescent. The flower only bloomed for a day and I never saw another one like it. Its white petals felt sacred, and it became an ode to that time and place, including my grandmother (a careful gardener who tended just as carefully to her grandchildren). Years later, the soft gray and blues remain, and I told Grandma that I found out it was a whitestar morning glory. I miss her dearly.
That same winter, I got paired tattoos with my ex. I think it was my idea and he went along with it, and it might mean more to me than it ever will to him. A koi fish on our inner wrists, turning as they swim to form a yin-yang symbol. I got it when I needed strength and motivation to cut contact with my father. My ex and I were also a pair, and I enjoyed the symmetry and symbolism. In hindsight, the fish swimming in different directions makes a lot of sense for why we didn't stay together in the end. Who was swimming behind who? Was it always going to be a never-ending cycle?
Next, a small rainbow under my collarbone. My “coming out” tattoo. I was comfortable in my bisexuality (now pansexuality), but quickly had a second meaning to avoid any raised brows from family members. Rainbows have followed me through life, appearing during pivotal moments of life and also tranquil ones. One appeared the same day as my paternal grandmother’s funeral, and another the day I left my college campus after we had a shooting. “Everything will be okay,” says a guardian beyond this world.
I have a paw print stamp tattooed on the back of my shoulder. It belongs to my beloved pup who is most likely found in my lap snuggling under blankets. She's my first dog and has been nothing short of a transformative force in my life. She is irreplaceable and has grown alongside me through some of the hardest years of my life. I used to want a dragon in this spot, but now I have a real companion’s mark there instead.
You’ll find a strawberry across from the small rainbow, a small heart at its core. This tattoo was a last-minute decision and Celestite went with me, celebrating my first Valentine’s Day single. It was a way to give myself a gift and a swell of love. Strawberries are my favorite fruit, and link to memories of both my grandmothers. One would make me strawberry cake, and the other made strawberry preserves for our pancakes. Strawberries ARE a love language.
A small sternum piece hides under my clothes, making me admire a new place on my body. It was my first flash piece, bringing a new sense of excitement as I met a new artist. The symmetry of the shapes and lines complement the symmetrical placement of my rainbow and strawberry. I am balanced, but not perfectly or identically, and that's beautiful to me.
Another Valentine's Day arrives, surrounded by my close friends who join me in getting another flash piece for myself. It's a cowgirl boot on the back of my arm with small heart motifs decorating it. Cowboys recently emerged from a deep part of my psyche, and I forgot about them between the ages of 12 and 22 but was quickly roped (haha) back in upon seeing Brokeback Mountain. I have a cowboy OC I like to draw, and found a book from childhood where I circled “cowboy” as what I wanted to be when I grew up. All fanfic brain rot that's queer-cowfolk coded? Assume I’m there.
Another flash piece joins the party, upon finding a small, local, independent artist. They did some amazing bug flash, so Sequoia and I went together to get different bugs. A large moth now decorates my other ankle, reminding me of the small (ironic, huh?) gray ones I see here in the summer. Overall, it’s a fun reminder of a wonderful day, and making a new connection with a wonderful artist.
To date, those are the tattoos on my body. I have two more appointments this year, and the itch grows as they get closer.
Soon, I’ll have three fairies on my arm, their closeness to each other reflecting the beautiful friendship I made with Dawn and Basil. To this day, I talk to them at every chance I get, and we scramble to make birthday and holiday plans when we can. They have changed me and changed my life for the better. The fairies will also resemble the ice fairies of Fantasia, a visual that has always stuck with me since I saw them for the first time.
As a Xmas present to myself, a garden angel will rest near the morning glory on my ankle. I drew something similar to the design last year and felt drawn to have the flash piece when I saw it. It's peaceful and solemn, surrounded by a vine and flowers. She’ll be a guardian over my special flower/grandmother.
Art is my life and I am a living work in progress. I feel more complete as more stories come into my life and onto my body. My love of others and things that impact me are what I want to show on my skin. I feel beautiful with tattoos, able to combine art and storytelling into my everyday life.
I can't exist without art, and this art wouldn't exist like this without me. I'm a museum of memories and art pieces. I am sacred, vulnerable, and constantly changing.