As someone with 25 tattoos at the ripe age of 24, I have gotten used to answering a variety of questions, but one question is consistent.
“Are you going to regret them when you’re older?”
Well, it’s hard to have regrets when we’re talking about something that is quite literally just skin deep, especially when I’ve always had much bigger issues to deal with.
The reality is that I shouldn’t have lived this long.
By my sophomore year of high school, I was a functioning alcoholic who was way too proud about somehow scoring a B on a math test while blackout drunk, and by the end of my junior year, I had a few suicide attempts under my belt.
With that said, if I get the privilege of living long enough for my tattoos to be a little washed out and wrinkly, that’s a gift and a blessing that I refuse to allow to be disrespected by a simple dislike of how my artwork may age over decades.
Every line on my skin holds memories that help ground me in my existence.
My tattoos are deeply personal to me, and have more symbolism than just through the art that’s depicted on my skin. The placement has also always been incredibly important to me.
Simply put, I tricked myself into getting clean from self-harming by getting tattoos in places I could have hurt myself.
Even if it isn’t as clean as when I first got the ink, it’s more important to have a faded or crooked tattoo than a perfectly straight scar from a razor.
While I may have my favorites and least favorites out of the couple dozen pieces of art that are inked into my skin, I don’t have any regrets, and I know that I won’t be getting even my least favorite tattoos removed.
My tattoos are part of who I am. They are how I remind myself of my own story. They are a reflection of me. They may be reflections of a younger version of me, but that’s something I love about my tattoos.
I have always struggled with my memory, so I purposefully put effort into not forgetting who I once was. That may come in the form of ensuring I remember all the words to some songs I loved in middle school or simply being the adult I wished I had as a kid, but my personal favorite way to honor myself is to put it in ink.
I used to be a voracious reader, so on my left forearm, I have a tattoo of my childhood bookshelf. On the inside of my right ankle I have a very simple linework tattoo of a sun setting over the ocean to remind me of my hometown of Malibu, California; and I have a rattlesnake tattooed on my right hip because my elementary school mascot was a rattlesnake, among other reasons.
I have a significant amount of animal tattoos because I have always gotten along better with animals than people. When I was little, my mom used to say I’d grow up to be a veterinarian because of that, but that was before we all realized writing was what came the most naturally to me.
The stingray on my right thigh simply reminds me of one of the first happy childhood memories I have, which was hoisting half my body into a touch tank to pet stingrays.
The bee on top of my right wrist symbolizes my worker bee tendencies and work ethic, and I love the irony of having a bee tattoo even though I’m allergic to them. The lion on the inside of my right forearm was mostly inspired by my brown, curly hair, which I consider my lion’s mane.
The great white shark on the outside of my left forearm signifies my ability to keep moving forward with a nod to the sheer amount of times I’ve heard “When I first met you, I thought you were mean” over the years.
A tattoo isn’t just a “cool picture” I decided to put on my skin. It’s a snapshot of who I was and what I was going through when I got it.
Even if those stories – like memories – fade as I age, it doesn’t change the fact that they were and always will be part of my story, good or bad.
And as any journalist will tell you, a story that excludes the parts that aren’t pretty isn’t a story worth printing.
