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Recently, a friend asked me how I feel about my tattoo now that I have had it for a couple of months. I said immediately that it makes me feel more like myself.
But what does that mean, it makes me feel more like myself? It’s not easy to put into words. I think the simplest way to say it is that it’s a reminder of things that I love about myself that I haven’t paid attention to in a long time. And it just feels… right. Like it’s a part of me that’s always been there but is only now visible.
Each individual illustration in the piece represents something I love, either literally or metaphorically. They are each like little keys that unlock a whole story or narrative or memory. I have a lot of loves in my life and so for this drawing, I narrowed it down, with one exception, to nature-related things.
The T. S. Eliot quote from “The Waste Land” is meaningful to me for a lot of reasons. These lines remind me that things happen in cycles, change is inevitable and can be painful and exhausting, and even if you feel like you can’t go on, you simply go on anyway. It all comes back around.
But truthfully, “The Waste Land” also catapults me back to a time and place (my late teens/early 20s, at college and shortly thereafter) when I was actively writing a lot of poetry and forming intense emotional connections. I loved that time in my life and I love that I have a permanent reminder of it now.
So, the tattoo represents the poet side of me and the artist side of me, with a lot of symbolic meaning that stirs up my emotions. And I think that it might help me stay connected to those identities.
The other thing I did recently was buy a pair of 8-eye black Doc Martens boots. I haven’t owned any since 2008. And I swear to you, the minute I put those on, I also felt more like myself than I have in a long time. That was a really nice surprise that I wasn’t expecting. I kinda want to live in them now.
Feeling more like myself is a good feeling and somewhat of a relief, especially when everything around us is so heartbreakingly terrible and I often feel invisible and incapable of helping change things. This was a change that I really, really needed.