For the past few months, I've been thinking about getting a tattoo. It started pretty innocently. At work, we started joking about getting tattoos to celebrate a co-worker's 30th birthday. I have never wanted a tattoo, even though makes me the minority in my own family. My mom went to get a circle of roses around her ankle to celebrate her 50th birthday. She said she always wanted one, but worried she would regret it. At 50, she realized she was old enough to make a smart decision. My brother got his first of many tattoos soon after his 18th birthday. It's a piece of black art on his upper back.
"What does it mean?" I asked him when he first came home with it.
"Nothing."
"What do you mean, nothing? You just got a tattoo you are going to have forever that doesn't mean anything?"
"Yeah, so?"
I thought maybe when I got older, went to college, I would understand. But I never did. My dad thought tattoos were gross, my former boyfriend didn't think they were pretty, and I just couldn't imagine why I would want to purposely sit for an hour and feel pain.
As we sat around talking about tattoos at work, I started to wonder what I would get even thought I knew I would never actually get anything. I thought about potential placements and what would look good there, but more importantly, what I could get that would really mean something to me.
A few weeks later, I discovered the Pen & Ink blog, which relates the stories behind people's tattoos. One of the first posts was from a man who had a rabbit on his back. He explained, "I got this tattoo because I suspected one day I would think it would be stupid."
That's when I got it. Getting a tattoo wouldn't be about what I actually got placed on my skin, I would be about the fact that I did it. It would be a constant reminder that there was a time in my life when I chose to go through something painful because I knew I would be more beautiful afterwards. And how could I ever regret that?
