Life Imitates Art

"They would not find me changed from [him] they knew / Only more sure of all I thought was true" 

--Robert Frost--

Last night I was lying in bed, staring at my arm. Not so long ago it was bare. In the space of a couple of months it has been poked and prodded and outlined and colour-stained by ink. And today, I had my final appointment to complete my half-sleeve tattoo.

I was thinking about this shift inside of me in the last few years, from a place of drear and apathy, to a latitude of unlimited zeal and iridescence, and how this tattoo is really quite reflective of not just an obvious physical change, but a psychological metamorphosis also.


Let's wind the clock back. There was a time not so long ago that if you would have asked me if I would ever get a tattoo I would have responded emphatically in the negative. The reasons were wide and varied, from the implications it might have for my career, to how unattractive it would look once everything started to migrate south.


Sometimes I look back at the unyielding way I've thought about many different things in my life and cringe. In hindsight, I'd formed these views because it was the 'right thing to do', or because I was scared of failure; of making mistakes. I frequently decided to err on the side of caution rather than throwing caution to the wind.

The process of growing up is strange. There are very distinct parts of me that I know will never change: the importance of family and friends; entrenched core values like honesty and loyalty; and a constant pursuit for self-betterment. The other parts are more malleable than I'd originally thought - like the part that could not deal with the permanency of a tattoo.


I've been hatching my skin art plan for about a year. I had resolved in myself the fact that I obviously wanted to do it since it had been on my mind for so long. My logical brain kicked in several times to battle against my hipster tendencies, but ultimately it failed in its pursuits. Anyway, when I'm a lawyer I can wear long-sleeved shirts. And when I'm old and wrinkly sitting in my recliner in a nursing home somewhere am I really going to look down at my skin and regret what is staring back at me?


So if it's a mistake, then it's a welcome mistake. It's proof that I was willing to do what I wanted to do without regard for circumstance or popular opinion. It's a reminder that I've lived my life vicariously and fully, wherever the winding road has taken me. And when push comes to shove, who really fucking cares anyway?