I like scars.
When I was in fourth grade, I got some sort of injury on my right calf. I made a decision - spurred on by the toughness of my hero, Xena: Warrior Princess - to pick at the injury repeatedly, giving myself a shiny new scar. Here I am, I thought - damaged, but living. I have a faint scar on my left thigh from where I rolled over onto a broken Christmas ornament; I have one little mark below my eyebrow from the time I ran face first into a teacher at lunch, smacked over my eye by a bowl of mashed potatoes (go ahead and laugh). In high school, I cut my right hipbone, and there remains a white line, pillowed and soft seventeen years later.
I have outside scars and I have inside scars, and the inside scars are harder to live with. I think often about that nine year old girl and her quest to leave a mark on pale, fresh skin. What was I saying with that desire to permanently injure myself? I felt like I had been through so many battles; I wanted proof.
I have new scars, now - scars which I put there. Scars which, like the mark on my calf, ground me in my body and give evidence of my strength.
That tattoo took about ten hours of work over two sessions. The first session was just the black outlines, the structure, and the second was color and shading. Yes, it hurt. It cost money. It required weeks of healing and inconvenience, my husband washing and applying lotion to the areas I couldn't reach.
All of these have been completed since May of last year - if you're counting, that's three tattoos in about nine months. Lest there be any doubt, I love getting tattoos, and I intend to get more. I'm not sure, exactly, what other designs I want. But yes, I anticipate many more hours in the tattoo artist's chair.
These new scars have set me free.
I've wanted tattoos my whole life and I've been downright terrified to get them. I'm not sure if I was worried about the pain - whatever happened to that little girl who made her own wounds? - but I was for sure scared of going against the values of my family. I always have been, even as I have vehemently, though internally, disagreed. Sometimes it felt like my family's ethos was the word of God, unimpeachable and irrefutable. I didn't want their judgment, ever - I didn't want them to stop loving me. But in May of last year, I woke up, got in my car, drove into Baltimore, walked into the Tattoo Museum in Fells Point, and started a new phase of my life.
It was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
Tattoos are productive scars. They don't just show pain but a creative determination. I have sat in the chair for nearly twelve hours, now; no one else did it for me. Artists did the work, but I made the choice. I yielded so that I might survive in a new way - survive visibly, undeniably. That process can never be taken away from me.
There's a sense of camouflage which comes with assenting to things you don't agree with. It's dishonest to make yourself so invisible - it's a covering of who you are to try to only please others. That, I think, leaves a deeper mark than needle and ink ever can. For so many years I lied to myself, pretending that everything was okay, pretending I should or even could be what other people wanted me to be. It was a silent cutting, a hidden bloodletting. As I refrained from pursuing this interest - tattooing - I also refrained from being myself on a broader scale. This little thing was a part of a much bigger thing.
From the moment that first needle pierced my skin, I knew I was making a personal choice that was both visible and irreversible. And it was deeply personal - it wasn't really an act of rebellion but an act of the self, declared. It was a huge relief, a burden lifted. And once I got that tattoo, I found it easier to build boundaries, to believe in my self-worth. I shook myself free of the familial word of God.
And there's a bigger picture, much bigger than the dialogue between family members and myself. I mentioned internal scars - a lot of those scars derive from bad things which have happened to my body. And as a woman, my body has been harmed by our society, too; I am an object, sometimes, more than I am a person. My body is gazed upon and legislated and measured and weighed. The worth of my body is lessened with age - it was seen as more valuable when it was immature. My body was coveted, regarded hungrily by strangers since I was twelve; my body, grown larger, was derided. My body has been political. On some days, my body belonged to everyone but myself.
But now it bears my marks.
I'm so much happier now.
I can't honestly say that's all down to my tattoos, of course. I've been doing a tremendous amount of work - going to therapy, writing thousands of words, making new friends. I've been teaching myself how to say no. But I do have these new scars to be worn with pride. Scars that will never be hidden. Here I am - willfully and beautifully damaged, but living.
Do I love my family less? Of course not! Do I prioritize my own happiness? You bet your butt! Am I still a part of a society which strives to own me? Unfortunately, yes, sometimes even more so now that I'm thin again. It's complicated. And, I'll tell you, people have just as many opinions about tattoos as they do the ratio of my hips to waist. But somehow, in getting these colorful markings, I care a heck of a lot less. My pain is my choice; my endurance is my apotheosis.
I was nine years old when I made a scar on purpose. I still have that scar; I don't like it as much as I thought I would. I thought I knew, then, how strong I could be - how strong I had to be. I've had to be much stronger. I've been small and large, externally and internally; I've been possessed, I've been captive. But I think about the Alice who felt like a hardened warrior princess, and I think about what she might think of me, now. If she'd look at these new scars and see them as I do - proof. Evidence.
Freedom.
So get ready, world, because I'm not finished. Not finished talking, or writing, or inking my skin. If I've got to carry these internal scars, then you've got to witness the external ones. I will never cover up. Look away if you want to -
But the scars remain.
And these, I put there.
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