Monday, 3. March 2008, 14:51:39

Again I don't know how this began, the ink addiction I mean. Since I was a child I always felt an especial attraction for this art BUT (the great but...) mum wouldn't let me. So I grew up, and with me the interest about tattoos.
It is not that I am a natural born rebel and it is not that I always go against what my mum says, I swear! There is nothing in this world that I like the most that share my things with mum and dad, BUT (again)... I tend to like all that which they despise: from heavy metal to black colour. And like this since I am a kid! Mum's sentence would be: "I don't know where does she get those ideas from!". I wonder that myself. I was born in a tiny village in between the mountain and the see, with a black and white two-channel tv and my friends where that kind of people whose absolute happiness was to go and check if the goats (yes, goats) had eaten the grass so that they had to move it... As a kid I used to get excited also about going to check the damn goat, all the perils awaiting for us in the fields, climbing up the trees (yes, you could not avoid them! those trees... and I hadn't read LOTR yet!), jumping on the rocks, and all those crazy things kids like doing when they are wild in the fields. Anyway, of course there was a time in my life when I got kinda tired of going to check the goats, and the horses and all the animals around... But they wouldn't! (well, maybe now their absolute happiness is to go to the same pub or bar in the same place to meet the same people and get drunk... great! And this doesn't mean that I don't love doing that... I'm trying to say that there are many more things in this life! Like getting drunk in Tokyo... maaaaaaaaaaaaaan! Anyway, let's go back to the story). So, with this situation, I just started to stay at home, reading, reading, reading... Visiting exciting places that where shown to me in those pages. I think this was one thing my mum always approved, though I have to admit I have hidden from her some books... I just don't wanna upset her, but I don't wanna give up being myself either! And that's how I ended up with 23, 1/3 of my body tattoed and she doesn't know (neither do daddy).
Anyway, I guess when I asked my mum if I could get a tattoo for the first time it is perfectly understandable that my mum said "NO", because I was... 11? 12? HOWEVER she made a mistake and said: "not until you are 18". So, as you can guess, I spent my teenage waiting to be 18. And I became 18 and... nothing happened. Mum wouldn't say yes. In the mean time, of course, I got my ears pierced (only like 3 holes... mum wouldn't let me...) and started developing my style until the limits my mum could stand. And then Hendrix (God) created university and separated the child from the mother, and Hendrix saw that it was good for both of them. Eventually I could be myself 24/7!
I started meeting people who shared my hobbies and who had different points of view, well, who had points of view! And my life started to make sense and I started to feel there was hope for me and my dreams and I started to dream bigger and bigger... and I wanted to remember that forever.
One of the reasons why people don't want to get tattoos is because they say they change and then, what they may love one day, they hate it on the next. That's a way of seing it. For me, my tattoos are memories I never want to forget, like those days in university, all the people I met... The desings won't tell no story to other people, but to me... they remind me that time I was madly in love, or that other time I was sick and tired of being sick and tired... oh! and those crazy nights with my friends, beer and rock and roll, and then the never ending exam periods, with no beer, no party, only books and rock and roll... yeah, all the rock and roll! And yet, the real symbolic meaning of the drawings speaks of something quite opposite, speaks of my innermost self...
Anytime I feel lost or I lose strenght or determination to achieve my goals, I only need to take a look at my tattoos and let my mind go with the flow and bring me memories, remind me why I'm here, why I am who I am, why I chose to be myself even when it would have been much easier to be the perfect daughter, the perfect woman... It's kind of meditation. When I look at my tattoos I also remember how I used to think in that moment and so I can contrast with how I think any moment I look at them.
I really hope when I'm old I have all my body (or most of it) tattoed. One of my favourite images of myself in the future is as a grandma with long white hair showing her tattoos to her grandchildren and grandgrandchildren, and telling them all the stories and hidden meanings.