Today I Got a Tattoo

Today, I got a tattoo.

Two years ago, I was sitting at a table with several of you and we were talking about what our bodies might look like without socialization. You asked me. 

I said, “tattoos, piercings, and actually change the color of my hair.”

“I can see that,” you said. 

Three weeks ago, I found a tattoo artist near me that used meditation as a guide to choose what art we put on our body. I was intrigued and feeling gutsy. We met, his studio smelled of palo santo. I thought of you. He asked me what intention I wanted to bring forth in my life and I thought power. I put my hand on my womb and felt the darkness, the sadness, the void that I have ignored for much too long. It’s like he knew that drums were what I needed. In our meditation, I felt the steady rhythm. My feet started to feel heavy, like they were rooted in this earth. Then my thighs felt heavy like I was now the trunk of a giant, wise tree. Then, I could only feel my waist. I was one with the earth. Fire burst up from me like a spurting volcano. I could feel the heat throughout my body. All was dark except the lava pouring out around me. I could feel the fear creeping up, but then the lights went out and it was just darkness. Ash surrounded me. The world burned to the ground. 

“Find your way back,” I thought. To the place of quiet, peace, spirit. The water’s edge on Cortes Island, toes surrounded by empty shells coated in purple glamour in the sun’s rays. The water carefully lapping up around my ankles. But this day I could not get there. Suddenly, I felt a cold, wet around my waist. The light came back on, and I was not on shore but in the water. Waist deep. I was looking at the place where I normally arrive. I could see the shore, could see some of you. But I was too far away to yell, and too far away to feel near. I looked down and the water was black. Fear started to burst up through me, and then he called me back to the studio. “Close call,” I thought.

“I see goddess, ocean, and you waist deep in the water,” he said. 

“I want to set my intention as stepping in my power,” I replied. 

He meditated on my intention, what we both saw. He saw a sea turtle. Not only do they brave the deep, the place of the ocean that I dare not go. But they survive all the ocean has to offer. And they do it by being their whole selves. They are the only turtle that cannot retract their head into their shell. They are also a mystery to me. In all of my travels, snorkels, swims, I had never seen one. Only heard everyone around me talk about the turtles they saw. I would and have swum for hours looking for the turtle who never swam in front of me. A trip three years ago brought me the first turtle I had ever seen in person. First, swimming in the ocean next to our boat. Then, on the shore of a sacred spot I was now visiting for the second time. It was a site of burial grounds. I had visited the same location 18 years prior. Eighteen years before, they were doing an excavation. Uncovering the history of the indigenous Hawaiians that blessed this small cove in Kauai. They invited me to participate and I moved a rock, holding it temderly, moving it to its new location at the archaeologist’s request. Eighteen years later, the burial sites were all intact. No archaeologists to be seen this time. But on the beach was a giant, green sea turtle. Taking a breath in the breaking waves. Back legs immersed in the lapping sea water. I dared not get too close. This animal is to be left in peace is what I knew. But I could see it’s eyes. The deep, dark of its eyes. Full of wisdom, life, and ancestors. I felt like I could see the afterlife in those eyes. Or something close. I just knew that this darkness was actually life. Spirit. 

Today, I got a tattoo. It’s a sea turtle. Swimming between the winds of the air we breathe and the ocean that caresses my spirit. It’s hugging a crow, the representation of my mantra … rebirth, flight, soar, my heart roars. 

He asked if I wanted to put it up higher on my arm, a place I could hide. I said no, fuck those that this bothers. I want to see it, this tattoo is for me. When I rest my arm, the turtle looks right at me. Reminding me that the darkness doesn’t have to be feared. That I can swim with my neck out and survive. That I can go into the deep waters and still be able to breathe.