An Old Scar, Revisited

My younger sister, Fiona, was here, visiting from New Mexico last week: a whirlwind trip that included house-hunting (and house-finding, and offer-making, and then deciding she didn't want to live in New England after all), visiting old friends, visiting relatives, being "auntie Fiona" to the boys, and tattooing my wife and me.

Fiona is a tattoo artist (a profession that suits her perfectly), and has been for a few years, but this was my first time going under her needle.


I got my first--and only--tattoo in January of 2001, when I was 20 years old. Lena and I had recently broken up after having lived together for 2 years. I had a new girlfriend, and I went to visit her in Oregon, and that's where I got my tattoo. Before we broke up, Lena and I had been engaged, and had spent some time designing our future wedding rings: a larger band, a space full of tiny stones, and then a smaller band. The tattoo that I chose was reminiscent of our design (minus the stones), and when people asked I told them that it symbolized my marriage to myself.

Lena and I broke up mainly due to my inability to be alone; she had started an outdoor leadership program that involved a series of 10-day trips into the wilderness. The first time she left, I felt so very lost. I had gone from living with my parents to living with Lena, and I had never learned how to live on my own. I left the relationship and jumped straight into a new one. By the time I got to Oregon, I knew that I had made a mistake.

Getting tattooed in my state of grief actually felt pretty good. I mean, it hurt very much, but it felt somewhat relieving to feel pain on the outside, and I was grateful to have a visible scar from this difficult time in my life. At the time, I wrote in my journal:

Went to Oregon.
Tried to Fall in Love.
Saw the Ocean.
Felt like I was going to Fall Off.
Got a Tattoo.
Good to Hurt Somewhere Else.

Taking care of my arm as it healed was a good introduction to taking care of myself in a larger sense. So, while months later I could see that I had been in no state to permanently alter my body, I did not regret my decision. The only thing that has bothered me about the tattoo over the years is that there were a few spots in the larger band that the tattoo artist missed. It has long been my plan to have Fiona do-over the whole tattoo so as to fill in those missing spots.

And that is exactly what she did last week.


Fiona first outlined each of the bands, and then went back with a larger needle to fill them in. After she had done the first outline, I felt fairly certain that she should just leave it like that. Really, I wasn't that bothered by the original errors, and I couldn't imagine tolerating the pain of the fill-in.


But Fiona insisted that I not back-out of my original vision. Yes, it would hurt, but only for a short while. It was absolutely excruciating. Either I had forgotten how much it hurt the first time around, or it actually hurt a whole lot more the second time (Fiona says that tattooing over scar tissue (i.e. a pre-existing tattoo) does actually hurt worse than tattooing on fresh skin). Additionally, my current life is so different from the life I was living 9 years ago: I am now practically the definition of happy and fulfilled, whereas back then I was lost and depressed. And thus, I found my tolerance for this type of pain (I liken it to what I imagine it would feel like to be slowly, deeply scratched with a piece of burning hot, jagged, broken glass) had been greatly reduced.


I left the session--my arm wrapped in plastic wrap--feeling grateful to my sister for being able to persevere in spite of my agony (inflicting pain is, of course, her least favorite part of the job), glad that it was over, and a bit traumatized. In some ways, revisiting the pain of my original tattoo brought me back to the place I had been in when I first decided to get it. I felt lost and disoriented. My arm was quite swollen and sore, and I quickly became painfully aware of just how often my children grab on to me for one reason or another. Ow. I wished that I could go back in time and visit the 20-year-old version of myself, whisper in her ear and tell her what life would look like in 9 years: Lena and I would be back together--married--living in the cutest little house with our four amazing sons. How that information would have carried me through the dark months to come.

In the days since Fiona "re-blacked" me, I have been forced to open a different--deeper, yet invisible--scar in the reactions from acquaintances who don't know my birth history.

"But surely the feeling of getting a tattoo can't compare to the feeling of childbirth!" They've exclaimed, one after another, as if reciting from a common script.

And I smile weakly and change the subject. And think again about myself at 20, so fully obsessed with birth and entirely certain about my life goal to become a homebirth midwife. I wouldn't want her to know this part of the future: what my births would actually look like. That I'd never experience the pain of childbirth.

Often when I meet a pregnant mama awaiting the birth of her first child, I will lie about my births. If she asks, I will say, "yes, I birthed them all vaginally, without drugs. I did it; and you can do it too." Sometimes I feel a bit guilty about spreading this mistruth (I am generally quite honest about my birth experiences, and happy to share them, in the right context). But this is what I wanted to hear when I was pregnant. I wanted to hear nothing but affirmations. I could never understand why people would share their births-gone-awry stories with me, pregnant, naive and impressionable. I never asked to hear anyone's birth story out of fear that it would not be positive. But still, people would offer their stories of unbearable pain, of labors ending in c-sections, either as a warning or simply without realizing that the information might not be helpful.

Thus my "new" tattoo has been unintentionally linked with my births. I look at it (and try not to scratch it; it is oh-so-itchy as it heals), and see its significance differently. I no longer see the 20-year-old, having ink burned into her arm as if to somehow ground herself onto the earth, but instead see the pain that I have--and have not--endured, bringing 3 people into this world. I am contemplating expanding this new meaning by adding something--more rings? To represent the kids?--to the tattoo. Of course, that would involve going through this all again. But I think I am strong enough to do it.