Well, it's actually been quite an experience. Scary, surprising and a bit of a rush - as in the rush one experiences when on a high. A few of my friends asked, all on the same day, if I was experiencing an early mid-life crisis - which I found quite funny. Not a mid-life crisis, no, just a little bit of self-expression. Not something I do very often.
I thank the friend who added to the design of the tattoo, and who came with me to have it done. She's played an influential role in me getting to where I am at the moment.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I'm a real nerd when it comes to blood and needles. I was getting over it though, in fact I'd go so far as to say that I am over those fears although I won't venture so far down the line that I'd sign up to donate blood, as much as I'd like to. However, a couple of weeks ago I changed my life insurance company and had to undergo the usual blood test. The nurse botched it up and so on Friday 15 October, the day I went for my tattoo, I had memories floating around of that test as well as of all the other pre-pregnancy dramas, like the day I visited my mom in ICU but could only stay for a few minutes because the sight of the needle from the drip stuck in her hand made me run out and puke into the manicured flower beds at Wilgeheuwel Hospital; like the first blood test I had before I fell pregnant with E when I was so disorientated that I tried to run into the men's bathroom and then collapsed in the corridor of Morningside Hospital - and lay there like a dying beetle until a haloed knight helped me up and pointed me to the ladies'; and like the day, many years ago, when I had a bump removed from my head and as I lay on the 'operating table', I coudn't feel any pain but I could feel the scalpel, and the blood running down the side of my head - which is when I believe all of this started (thank goodness my girls were both born naturally and not by C-section!).
And so I went well prepared to the tattoo shop in Melville armed with chocolate and a coke, expecting to experience that terrible feeling when you break into a cold sweat, when the world starts spinning and you have to find a dark and quiet spot, preferably next to a toilet, to get rid of your last meal.
But none of that happened. I knew where the bathroom was in case I needed to run there (it was so dam far that I wouldn't have made it in time if I had needed to); I knew where the closest bucket was, because I knew how far away the bathroom was; and I had told my friend and the tattoo guy to not allow me to chicken out. I sat on a bed with the curtains to the shop wide open, watching the people walking by, focusing on every word that B said so that my attention wasn't drawn to what was going on behind me and so that I wasn't tempted to glance in the mirror next to me. He did have to stop for a little while - the world did start to spin a bit - but it wasn't for long, and as he gave the final touches to the design, and the final wipe to my newly decorated back (with the beat of ACDC's 'Thunderstruck' bellowing from the radio), I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline, excitement and pride :-)
What does the design mean? Well it's kind of taken on even more of a meaning since I had it done. People who know me well have said 'it's you exactly'. The thicker lines depict a strength in me that I know is there - I've been through to much for it not to be. The part of me that makes me stubborn, makes me angry; makes me say things when I shouldn't; makes me stand up for what I believe in and has helped me to weather the storm of the last few years. The thinner lines are that softer side of me, that maternal side that makes my friends comment on my 'mom-ness', but that's also uncertain and yearns for love, encouragement and acknowledgement.The design is feminine and beautiful and free. The details - the butterfly and the daisies, which are the flowers of innocence, are for my children.
I love it!
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