Ink...

Ink - (ĭngk) n. A pigmented liquid or paste used especially for writing or printing.
                   tr.v. 1. To mark, coat, or stain with ink. 2. Informal. To append one's signature to (a
                              contract, for example.)


Ink has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I began reading at the age of three, devouring books actually. By first grade, I was reading at a sixth grade level. (Of course being the curious child I was, by the age of five I knew where my dad and uncles kept their Playboy and Penthouse magazines and was reading those too, but that's another blog.)


Once I learned to write, an ink pen was my tool of choice. I think I liked the permanence of it - where I had been, what I had done, couldn't be erased. It could still be torn and thrown out but it was like I'd left my own mark on the universe. I used to write as much as I read. I wrote short stories, poetry, my thoughts and dreams filling diaries and journals. 


And doodles!! I didn't always use ink to draw, but being a lefty, if I used ink, at least I didn't smear my drawings. So I practiced, developed some confidence in my artistic abilities and learned to like the rough edges. I slowly added painting to my skill set - watercolors, acrylics, etc. - but found I leaned toward using the more permanent pigments.


Permanence........ I know in the grand scheme of things, I make no great impact on the world. I suppose growing up, I never felt very important. I wanted to be, but never felt it. I wasn't particularly praised for any achievements that I made or skills I possessed. Maybe that's why my younger years were spent immersed in books - seeking new experiences, places and adventures that seemed they would never be part of my real world. When I wrote I could recreate my world - even if it was only on paper. When I drew or painted I could control what was around me and how it appeared. 


Being older now I still don't feel like I make any great impact on the world, but then, a great impact isn't my goal. Being myself, being happy, being a good mom, being a good partner - those are my goals. A permanent effect on the world doesn't matter to me, knowing that I permanently matter to someone does. I can now see ways in which being myself impacts people. I get private messages from people about how I inspire them or how something I said was just what they needed to hear at that moment. It's strange to feel so small for so long and suddenly realize that even "small" you affect people, that small simple things - being yourself, being honest, being open to life - can turn out to be big in their own little ways. 


After many years of being sidetracked by other people's expectations of me, I knew I had to return to being me. In the process of becoming myself again, I returned to that familiar memory keeper I called "ink". I began writing again, I began drawing and painting again, and an old desire returned. Tattoos. I honestly always wanted tattoos, but when you live with a judgmental person who every time it's mentioned says "If you want one get one, but I think they're trashy," and especially when you feel like nothing in that relationship, it's very difficult to just do what you want to do. It hadn't really ever left me, I had just steered away from getting tattoos because of worrying about the judgments that would come with them. Somewhere along the way I'd become afraid of permanence and afraid of being myself. I had let being small turn into being insignificant. I knew if I was going to get back to me and be able to stand my ground there, my fears had to be overcome, I couldn't keep hiding myself and letting myself feel insignificant. 


People get tattoos for many reasons. Some later regret their thought process behind getting the tattoo and will say they regret the tattoo, rather than admit they regret a moment in time. Others proudly display their tattoos, mementos of their experiences, memories and milestones from their lives. People who've never wanted them won't ever understand why someone would. I get tattoos for me. Each tattoo I've gotten makes me feel more like myself. That's the only way I can explain it. My tattoos are permanent reminders of me...imprints from moments in my life, things I love, representations of things I remember fondly. I pick things that are constant and steady, touchstones of my life and who I am, even the tiniest details.

They also make me feel more "colorful", lighter, happier. It's not about feeling like a "bad-ass" or anything like that, they make me comfortable. They also make dealing with other people easier for me. Although I can be a "chatty Cathy" I also have a shy and introverted side. Tattoos, especially on a woman, can immediately bring the "pig" in a guy to the surface. Face it, people make assumptions, and for some reason when it comes to tattoos people seem to be much more apt to be straight forward with what's on their mind.  Whether it's "Why would you do that?" or a statement of appreciation for the artwork, or a very blunt invitation for sex, it seems to cut through the games and bullshit. A guy who's a pig won't bother to hide it, a catty female won't bother faking nice, and every now and again, it gives someone - who may not approach you otherwise - a starting point for a conversation. They may change my appearance but they don't change who I am. Criticize if that's your nature but before you do think of what you're about to let fly. If you are obviously overweight and out of shape and want to ask "how I could do that to my body?" be prepared to hear "how could you do that to your body?" Before you, with your trying-to-look-perfect appearance, nose in the air and snarled up face, make a snide comment about my tattoos or what you think I must be like, you need to have a response ready for when I ask why you live in such a way that you appear outwardly miserable and feel a need to spread misery and negativity. I didn't have a single tattoo until I was almost 39 - a lot of thought has gone into my tattoos.


I started simply enough with the title of a song by Government Mule - Beautifully Broken. I was going through a divorce, everything I thought I had was built on a foundation of lies and held together by more lies. If you think about it though, all of us go through things that we think will break us and few of us ever actually shatter. Most of us just develop stress fractures that mold our character and reactions and lead us on different paths. I love the look of cracked glass vases and sculptures. People seem like those pieces of art - complex, strong and weak all at once, they may withstand a great deal day in and day out but one tiny bump in just the right place could shatter everything.  

(I have since learned that I am much stronger than I ever thought I was. I still struggle sometimes with asserting myself but I recognize my strength and have stopped thinking of myself as "broken" - this may get redone at some point. But right now my focus is on completing a sleeve.)

Each tattoo has made me a bolder version of me...

My wings are from an Italian quote "We are all born angels but with only one wing. To truly fly we must embrace another." It was going to be my first tattoo but with only one wing because I felt I hadn't found that perfect match for me. But I've found the one that makes me fly so it became a set....

My guns are a reminder to myself about the strong willed - albeit sometimes crazy - stock that I come from....

 

 

Skulls are something I've always drawn, it's not a fascination with death, it's about anatomy, I have one that represents me and one that represents the man in my life....

 

A moon because I've always been a night person....


Waves and a sunset because I adore the oceans and sunsets.....

Crows because they're always around....

The quotes "I'll keep you safe" and "You keep me wild" because that's how my husband and I balance each other....

Two anatomical hearts with octopi tentacles entwining each other for several reasons, my love of the ocean, my love of anatomy, thinking the kick-ass sculpture I based it on was beautiful and essentially it represents love - a thing that grabs hold of your heart, surrounds it, binds you to another....

(Only outlined at the moment.)


And there's much more to come. It takes time just like it takes courage to really be yourself. Sometimes my courage grows and I add another milestone, sometimes I reveal a part of myself with a tattoo and the courage to be bolder follows. Either way I'll continue to be me. Maybe some piece of what I do with ink, my words or my art, will impact people. Maybe it won't. But it will forever be part of me.
 
It's my Beautiful Crazy....Ink.

Life...

Life, that thing that every time you think you’ve got it figured out, changes the game. It’s unpredictable, follows no rules, no plans, people try constantly to guess the meaning of it, define what makes a good one, but the only thing guaranteed about life is that no one is getting out of it alive.

In the meantime though, I’m learning to live my own life. . .

For children it’s easy. It’s like the little story of a teacher who asks each kid in her class what they want to be when they grow up. She hears many of the typical answers from her class - a policeman, a firefighter, a teacher, etc. When she gets to the last little boy in the class she asks, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” His answer, “Happy.” The teacher tells him, “I think you missed the point of the question.” He looked at her and said, “No, I think you’ve missed the point.”

Somewhere along the way, as we grow older, what makes us happy gets colored over with the things that make our families, our partners - even society - happy. It’s easy to fall into that routine, getting through each day trying to keep the people around you happy so that things are easier for you. It's convenient really because it gives you an excuse, a scapegoat to take the blame when your heart starts telling you you're not happy.

It takes guts to get out there and live - especially when what makes you happy is radically different from what makes the people around you happy and even more so when getting happy involves turning your whole life upside down and going against the grain of those around you. I'm not talking "Braveheart-charging-into-battle" courage. I'm talking about that tiny voice at the end of the day saying "I'm going to try again tomorrow" kind of courage.

I know because I've been there.

In school, I dreamed of many things as young people often do. I dreamed of having passionate affairs. I could see myself a single mom, but not really married. I dreamed of being a writer, of leaving my small hometown and its factories to travel. Mostly though, I dreamed of finding that one person who would love me without conditions, without limits - the one who could set my world on fire. 

The fact of the matter for that last "dream" however, is that I was never popular with the guys. I hung out with lots of them, but I was the more of the little sister or one of the guys. That and my desperation to be loved would be the undoing of the dreams of my youth.

At least for 21 years.......

I let my dreams be sidetracked by someone else's. Granted I thought in the beginning that our dreams were the same. He was in a band, he wanted to travel. He asked me to marry him and 5 years into dating - I found out he was cheating. That should have been it, I know. Hindsight is 20/20 but after 3 months apart and no one showing interest in me, that familiar fear of loneliness set in and I believed his apologies and promises that it wouldn't happen again were sincere. Within a year we were married. Turned out, he was the only one traveling. My job didn't allow me to take off every Friday. So I spent countless weekends alone. One year into the marriage, I got a call from a man saying my husband was sleeping with his wife. Again, my desperation and fear of being alone kicked in and once again I believed his lies that nothing happened. These gigantic "little clues" continued to surface every year, and every year I pushed them to the back of my mind. I didn't want to admit I was wrong about him, that the marriage was a mistake and huge disaster. Even after my son was born, the clues rolled in and I let them roll off my back. I had a different focus with a baby in the picture and the ex had the perfect cover for his double life. I was what his parents expected of him - a home life, a wife & family and every Friday he rolled out of town, out of state to play the role of some rock star. After so many years of internalizing the little clues, of ignoring what deep down I knew, after ignoring my own dreams and setting my own happiness on the back burner for so long, my self-esteem was at rock bottom and I had become numb inside and good at putting on that happy face for everyone around me. I had always told myself, "If I just had real proof, I'd leave." My own happiness wasn't a good enough reason to leave. I spent the better part of 21 years thinking I wasn't worthy of being truly happy.

They say be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. I got my proof in spades...that, and a life turned upside-down.

Most people are perfectly content to continue in situations where they're borderline happy or even flat-out miserable because of comfort and a fear of starting over. When I found myself on my knees in the dirt, I may not have been able to see where I was headed because of all the dust but I knew I was getting up off of my knees.  

I had my out - the hard way, but I had it. I didn't get vindictive or spiteful - I got my 18 boxes of personal things, half of my son's stuff and left. 

Funny how in the midst of chaos there can be clarity. Maybe it's because when you have a million things going through your mind that you don't have answers to, the only thing that can get above that noise is your heart. Even though my mind couldn't begin to deal with everything it would take to start over...my heart knew it had its chance.


My heart knew I deserved better (even if I didn't believe it.)
My heart knew it was tired of living a lie (even though it had become habit.)
My heart knew I could handle whatever was heading my way (even if I wasn't so sure of it.)
My heart knew that my life was supposed to be more than it had been so far (even though I had seemed to give up on myself.)
and most importantly........
My heart knew the person I needed in my life the second our eyes met (and wouldn't let me  walk away even when things were tough.)


In many respects, a life spent following your heart isn't easy. Your heart doesn't care about income and bills. It can make you do things you wouldn't do "if you were thinking straight". Following your heart through life can make many people around you question your sanity and treat you like an outsider. But in another respect, it can be the easiest life. Sure things may aggravate me during the day, that's life, but I wake up happy and I go to bed happy. 
I smile and laugh, every day.


My life may not be an easy one but it's a very happy one now, and best of all...
it's MY beautiful crazy... life...

                              

Me...

This isn't an explanation or an excuse of any kind, I am who I am, this is just me.


I realize different people who read my blog will take away different views and opinions,  some will still see it as an explanation or excuse regardless of how I mean for it to be taken. Other people aren't something that is within my control, hell, I'm sometimes beyond my own control.


The simple fact of it is this, each of us lives within our own "reality". Each of us is a walking breathing result of the experiences we have had and continue to have, and this is just my reality. Whether we like it or not, whether we're aware of it or not, our experiences color how we interact with and react to everything and everyone around us. They become an unconscious mechanism that we use as a guide, a measure and sometimes a defense system in our lives.


I'm no different than anyone else - I'm guilty of allowing myself to lose sight of the fact that I'm actually in control of my life, that I deserve to be happy, that I can - at any time - change my choices and change my life.


I spent too many years with a man who was never faithful because I never felt like I was worth more. I can't explain that any clearer. It took a very long time for me to see that truth about myself and change it. It took concrete proof of his infidelity to set me free - to make me feel justified in pursuing my own happiness. For most of the relationship I told myself, "If I just had proof". Another truth is that I had that proof in many forms over the years (including my gut instincts which I pushed aside yearly) but I was too scared of being alone to walk away, too insecure about myself to start again. Different people through those years knew I wasn't happy, but no one ever said to me "You deserve to be happy" or "You need to think of yourself". And it's really my own fault for allowing him to turn me into a doormat. It's my fault for believing his lies, the lies his friends backed up, it's my fault for ignoring the obvious signs of his infidelity, it's my fault for buying into his "poor me" routine and forgiving him time after time. There were times that I never confronted him but rather silently forgave him in the face of proof. 


I had to apologize to myself for not standing up for me. I had to apologize to myself for wasting so much of my life. I had to apologize to myself for giving up on me. I had to apologize to myself for lying to me, for selling me and my dreams short, for thinking I wasn't worthy of being happy. I had to apologize to myself for hiding away worried about what others may think, or how they may perceive me. I had to apologize for trying to force myself in molds that other people created for me - like a round peg in a square hole, my heart knew it wasn't a good fit but I put on a smile and played the role.


I had to figure out why I let myself get where I was in order to leave that place...


I had to stop and think about why I was making the choices I made... 


I had to take responsibility for myself and my decisions... 


I had to find faith in myself again...


I had to be aware of myself...


I had to love myself...


I had to be me...


I know that my family has trouble accepting my choices sometimes, but then, a lot of my parents generation, as the generations before them, weren't the type to really talk with each other. They talked about the day, what's for dinner, what so-and-so did or said, but they didn't talk about dreams or what made each of us tick. Life was just a day to day thing that you settled into and got through. That was my example, my experience, growing up. It affected the decisions I made in my first marriage and in my life up until the age of 39.


This may be a little off topic for now, but I'm a mom and all of this "awareness" made me realize something. When a child is born, we aren't disappointed in them. For the first few years, we have no disappointment in them, moments of embarrassment maybe, but not disappointment. We actually find joy in their growth as a person. Children, as they learn to speak possess a unique - sometimes funny, sometimes embarrassing - honesty. They charge through life the only way they can, as themselves. Children learn to edit their honesty and themselves according to their parents' disappointment and expectations (which they pass along having learned from their own parents, from society, from their own personal disappointments and the ways in which they let themselves down). I can honestly say I haven't been disappointed in my son (embarrassed yes, but that doesn't go without repayment in full). He is himself, in spite of me or his father. All I want for him his happiness. There's no promise of an easy life, but happy is attainable, and in the last two years I've learned that happiness breeds happiness.


I'm aware now of the influence my experiences exert in my life and I work to stay conscious of what is motivating my reactions and decisions. I'm making decisions based on me, my happiness, and what fits for me, not what makes me fit with others. 


I'm happy being beautiful crazy...Me...