“Hey is James in?” I said, stomach churning, mind reeling with excuses I might use. “One sec,” I hear. “Hey this is James,” the deep, friendly voice inviting me to be real. “James, this is Laura Probert, I have an appointment with you this Friday. I have decided to cancel. I read your contract and I know I’m forfeiting my deposit,” I add, waiting for him to ask me why. But he doesn’t. “I understand,” he replies. “You have 90 days to reschedule, so if you change your mind, just give me a call back,” he finished without judgement or questions.
Just a few weeks before my 47th birthday, I sat disappointed that he didn’t want to hear my lame excuse about how this new tattoo was going to cause my divorce. I was desperate to tell someone other than my BFF who I imagined was getting tired of hearing my boring, old story of unhappiness. “Thanks for your understanding, I will let you know if I change my mind,” I said, instead of forcing my story on him.
I took a really long breath and sighed out the exhale. Why did I want a tattoo anyway? What was I trying to prove? Did I really need that kind of attention? I continued to beat myself up about it for days, moving back and forth between my fear voice and the me who really wanted that badass tattoo. I remember tip toeing around the subject a month before, testing the waters with my husband, “And when I get my new tattoo…” I said to my daughter, strategically within earshot of my husband. “No, no more tattoos,” he said, confirming what my gut already knew, but disappointing me nonetheless.
My life was tattoo-worthy. A forty year fight to finally come around to realizing that it wouldn’t matter who told me I was good enough if I didn’t believe it myself. I wanted the permanent reminder of that fight, a reminder to live. To feel my fear as the newly discovered compass I knew would lead me to my dreams. This tattoo, like my first, meant something to me.
“Hi, how are you?” the friendly, overly-pierced woman at the desk greeted me. “Hi, I’m Laura, I have an appointment with James at noon,” I said, my hands slightly sweaty from nerves. I wondered if she was the one who had erased my name from the appointment book the first time. I wonder what she wondered about me.
I immediately threw myself into full on judgement and compared myself to everyone I saw in that room, nosily wondering about their lives and desperately wanting to tell my story to anyone who would listen. I knew how bad it hurt to get a tattoo. At the point during my first one when I sweated through my shirt and had to ask to lay down, I wondered what was wrong with me. Why would anyone do this to themselves? Looking around at the tattoo-covered people in the shop made me feel at ease.
“You are a little early, James isn’t here yet,” the gal replied, “You can go grab something at the deli downstairs or just hang out here and wait, whatever you want to do.” I want to get this the Hell over with, I thought. I went for a sandwich thinking that having something in my stomach when I threw up would be much better than throwing up stomach acid.
I wandered back upstairs three minutes before my appointment time because being on time is late in my proper world, and sat on the long, black vinyl-covered bench that bordered the waiting area of the tattoo parlor, in full view of the stations where a few artists sat waiting for their appointments. James was late. Just go home now, I thought, who cares if you run out of here, they won’t even notice, I am sure people do that all the time...my mind was a mess of flight thoughts. Something made me stay.
When James walked in and introduced himself I felt half relieved, but still dreamed of telling him I had changed my mind after all, and how sorry I was. “Hey, nice to meet you,” I said. He shook my hand and smiled, his white, spiky Bart Simpson hair drawing my eyes up, away from his tattoo-smothered arms.
“I’ll be just a few minutes,” he continued, and I watched him move back and forth from the counter to the chairs in the back, to the office in the way back and back to the counter, for a half fucking hour, while I sat sweating and dreaming up an escape plan.
“Okay I am ready for you,” he finally says. It’s about fucking time, I think, but smile instead and follow him like a little duckling to the chair that looks like a cross between an old fashioned barber chair and the chair where the lethal injection takes place. Did they think of that? I wonder.
James gets out his yellow highlighter and outlines the feather design I want onto my left forearm, upside down. I had to speak up. The feather was supposed to go in the other direction. I wondered if my face gave my discomfort away. You idiot! Tell him it’s upside down! The voice in my head was trying. “It’s supposed to go the other way,” I tell him after several awkward moments of not saying anything in between hyperventilations.
Fear was the whole reason I was here. The fear of speaking up, standing up for myself. Speaking my truth was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. It brought up a feeling inside of me that was so uncomfortable, so painful, that I spent my whole life stuffing that pain instead of learning how to speak up. I was done.
“Your Fear Is Boring,” the line Elizabeth Gilbert titled her post with, rang like the Liberty bell inside my soul. Fuck. Yes, your fear is boring. It keeps you from being alive. It keeps you from your dreams. It is ruining your life. By the time I finished the last line of her powerful post I had dreamed up the tattoo, as a forever reminder that I couldn’t let fear keep me from my kick-ass life anymore.
“Can’t you just plan a nice outing or…” I can’t even remember the rest of the words my mom emailed about my tattoo plan. Like when I dropped an F-bomb, it was hard for her to tolerate the idea that her daughter wanted a tattoo. So I stopped talking about it and secretly planned my appointment. I did, at the last minute, tell my husband. I vaguely remember the loaded silence and it took everything in me not to cancel for the second time.
If you do everything based on the opinions of other people, you are no longer living your own life, my wise voice reminded me. He is going to divorce you over this, my fear voice fought back. I was confused about what voice asked the next list of questions: Why do you really want this tattoo? Is it for attention? Is it because you are lonely? If you are lonely, shouldn’t you tell him? Shouldn’t you work out your life at home and forget about the tattoo parlor?
I was laying face down on the chair, waiting for my lethal injection. James warned me before he began so I wouldn’t wiggle or jump. It hurt, but not as bad as my first one, and a huge wash of warm relief dripped down over my body. “Are you doing okay?” he would ask periodically, allowing me to trust that he actually cared, and that made me breathe.
