I GOT A TATTOO!
Surprise! I got my first tattoo about a month and a half ago (after I was fully vaccinated) and it’s an experience I wanted to write about. The first two questions I get asked after I show people are 1. What does it mean? and 2. Did it hurt? If those are your first two questions too, I promise I’ll answer in this post.
Storytime: I’ve been thinking about this particular tattoo for four years, but I could never get the design or placement to feel right. In the depths of 2020 hell, I finally came up with something I loved and promised myself that I would get the tattoo as soon as I felt safe enough. 2020 was a terrible year, but it was also a clarifying year; all of the reasons not to tattoo my body fell away. If I could die from breathing someone else’s air, there was no damn reason to be afraid of a few needles or social expectations.
Getting this tattoo really feels like something I did for myself. It crystallized a lot of things I had been turning around for a while — what pain is, what grief is, and how to live intentionally. It’s a line from my favorite poem, “UNBURNABLE THE COLD IS FLOODING OUR LIVES” by Kaveh Akbar in his collection Calling a Wolf a Wolf. This poem found me at a time when I was nearly pulled under by grief. I return to it often, and its meaning has only multiplied for me. My original intention was to tattoo different lines onto my wrist, but every tattoo artist I talked to said that was too many words for the space; if letters are too small, the ink blurs into blobs over time as skin stretches and ages. I’ve included the poem here, and you can see I underlined the lines “how many times are you allowed to lose the same beloveds / before you stop believing they’re gone”
To me, there is so much in just those two lines. I feel my family in them, the beloveds I have said goodbye to over and over again, each tearful goodbye in the airport overwritten by the next time I visit Nanjing until the oceans separating us collapse. The grief after my first dog, Holly, died is in these lines. There are some griefs that remake you as a person, and losing Holly de-centered me, unmoored me from the earth. I tried to claw my way back, but the self that existed on the earth at the same time as her is gone. For me, there was so much comfort in this poem, in these lines. They opened the possibility that losing my beloveds in these waves of grief and separation meant I could carry them with me. I did not have to believe them gone. If I could hold my beloveds; if I could believe them always with me: through the losses I could persevere.
But the lines were too long for my wrist, so I shelved the idea and just held the words inside me. Then, after years and years of reading and re-reading this same poem, the final few stanzas caught me. I think that’s what a good poem does — sits inside of you and changes how you interface with the world. I’m not going to go too into this, but these last few years I started to really struggle with my mental health. In quiet moments, it became very important to me that I hold onto the words “I am glad I still exist glad for cats and moss / and Turkish indigo” and the idea of continuation in the final words of the poem, “and yet and yet “
The words felt circular to me, the possibility of continued existence lapping in on itself. Coupled with the imagery of the final few lines, “and yet to be light upon the earth / to be steel bent around an endless black to once again / be God’s own tuning fork and yet and yet ,“ which I’ve always taken to be an outer space-feeling image, I came up with this open circle design.
And now, after I’ve close read my tattoo for you and revealed too much personal information on the internet, the reveal!
Irena’s left arm, showing the circular tattoo on her inner forearm
Now that you’ve seen it and know the meaning (short answer: it’s a line from my favorite poem), on to the second question: Did it hurt?
My answer is no. It was not pain, but vibration and heat. I focused on breathing and being in my body, letting it protect me with adrenaline and distraction. The experience itself was very meaningful for me; as I stared at the painted tin ceiling of East River Tattoo, it really struck me how profound it is to ink someone else’s words onto your body.
Another layer of the tattooing experience for me is that a cool Asian woman tattooed me. This going to sound a little weird, and I hope it comes out right, but she was so kind and open and knew it was my first tattoo. After all the pandemic isolation, she was one of the first people to touch me in over a year. I remember thinking about how warm her skin was, and how precious it was to have her arm pressed over mine as she tried to save me from pain. After I got used to the sensation, one of my first feelings was overwhelming grief for the Asian women murdered in the Atlanta shooting — this seemingly unrelated experience stirred up emotion because I was so centered in my body. My body; my woman body; my Asian woman body; held so vulnerable and open on the table, but tended to with such care by this Asian woman artist who was a stranger to me, but doing her best to keep me comfortable and create something meaningful on my skin. This pairing was pure coincidence; I liked her work and she happened to tattoo at the studio near my house and have a last-minute cancellation opening. Coincidence, yet it meant so much to think of bodies and care work and who we choose to be near with intention and tenderness.
Now that I have this tattoo on my forearm, I feel more like myself, like I have solidified my intentions and how I want to be and live moving forward. I’ve been working on grounding myself in my body and connecting to how I really feel, and this is a reminder every day. And yet and yet.
Griffin looking adorable while leaning against Irena’s side, showing the tattoo on her arm
