Tattoo You

When I was 26, I seriously considered getting a tattoo. I seriously considered it for so long that I never got around to doing it, and here it is almost 14 years later and I have no tattoos. The only permanent marks I have on my skin are the kind of scars found on any child who fought with her brothers and sisters (in my case, the other kids in the neighborhood, whom I loved dearly and yet occasionally was driven to attempt to hurt badly).


At the time I was going through a lot of changes. Shobi-wan and I split up, which necessitated my finding a new place to live. At the same time, I was transitioning from being a regular "substitute" Residential Counselor at Harry's Mother to being a Crisis Intervention Specialist. RCs worked with the the youth in residence; CIS were the teen hotline, and worked at night and on the weekends doing phone counseling, springing kids from Juvie, doing intakes, and providing back-up for the RCs. I felt pretty challenged by this position because I felt like I was in crisis myself at the time, not knowing where I was going or what I was doing.


I caught on the idea of flames because fire burns something which results in something else. The example in my head was always that a log is wood, and even though the fire consumes it there is something left: ashes (not to mention the gas and energy that are released during the burning). I found the image I wanted in my big, hardcover copy of The Hobbit, from the scene in which the dwarves are captured by the Wood-Elves. The illustrations are prints of scenes from the Rankin-Bass version that aired on TV in 1977. I thought I would have the tattoo put over my heart, because that's where I felt all the struggle.


I never did it - or maybe I haven't yet.