Some day we'll find it...

The buzzing sounded scary.

I couldn't see the little needle-gun thing, though. I don't know if that made it better or worse. Y'know, that fear-of-the-unknown. And the anticipation of fear which, like anticipation of something good, can end up being more intense than whatever it is when it finally shows up. It made me cringe a little, anyway, even though that's apparently bad if you're getting tattooed because it makes it hurt more.

I was mostly excited. I'd already learned new things, mostly about how the sketch is transferred onto skin. "Stand up straight, girl!" Laurence, the tattoo artist, said as he was doing that. He was very nice and I liked him a lot.

But then the scary buzzing started. A bit like the drill at the dentist's...


I suppose I should say that I did not get a tattoo.

demiurgician did! I got to watch. (I also took that picture, just after it was done.) And, as you can see, she's not new to the process. This was her fourth tattoo (but three of them look like one big one: the triangles were first; this is the second set of vines and flowers to be added, as you can probably tell--the colors of the new bit will match the old once everything's healed), and she handled the process very well. She was very excited--before, during, and after--about her new tattoo.

It never occurred to me that watching a friend get tattooed might make a nice outing. But Elizabeth went with belladonnalin to watch her get the last installment of her tattoos, and afterward was all the more excited to get her own. I was a bit afraid that if I went along to watch I'd meet the same fate!

But luckily I am (a) poor (b) a big wuss who doesn't like pain and (c) unable to think of anything I'd really want to wear on my skin for the rest of my life. So I've managed to avoid signing up for my own tattoos, so far.

Yet these two make them seem appealing. I sort of envy them having a Thing (or many Things) that they like enough to want to wear them all the time. And they both have interesting and thoughtful reasons behind their tattoos, stories to tell about their tattoos.

Elizabeth and I hung out in Starbucks for a while afterwards (she showed it off, clingfilm and all, to the people working there) and had many interesting conversations about how we got here and where we're going. I asked about her tattoos, having not heard much of the stories behind them yet, and heard about the themes of growth and change that seem to run through them all. I really like that she has emblems of change inked permanently on her body. But I guess change is the one constant; it shows up whether you like it or not.

And while sometimes it might be nice to forget the things that ended badly or just don't seem like much a part of you any more, as tempting as it may be to revise your own history to fit your current outlook, it's ultimately better to realize that your life, like Elizabeth's tattoos, is a work in progress. There are landmarks of where you've been, and there's still the potential of more to come.