Experience #6 Something Permanent

So if it hasn’t become evident from previous experiences yet, I’ll just outright confess that I’m completely vain. I wear makeup and exercise every day, and I love trying new beauty products with all their fantastic promises. So when I decided to get a tattoo for this next experience, people who really know me thought I’d gone crazy, someone even mentioned a mid-life crisis.

I’ve never done anything to my body to permanently distort it, so why now?

The simple, but of course not so simple, answer is that it’s symbolic. As an English teacher, I love the idea that something can represent so much more than itself. This small, hidden away tattoo has a deeper meaning for me than just the year I’m leaving fear and, apparently for some, sanity behind.

The tattoo is symbolic of a lesson that came with a high price. A lesson in how and why things fail and fall apart. At the beginning of my marriage, I still believed anything was possible; that I could have all the goals in my life realized and not have to make any sacrifices. I went into my marriage believing that I’d found someone who would help me accomplish my goals instead of change them. I remember a conversation with an uncle right before my wedding. He questioned me on getting married so young, reminding me of all the goals I’d set for myself. I told him that it would be okay, that I would still accomplish them. My future husband understood what they meant to me.

Time wore on though and everything began to change. If I wanted this, I’d have to give that up. If I wanted to be happy as a couple, I’d have to give up wanting, wanting anything that would tear me away from the life he pictured for us. But I was guilty, too. I gave in little by little, persuaded by reason that it was what was best. That this was the life I was supposed to want. Reason dominated until the life I led resembled nothing of the life I wanted. Still, my head reasoned with my heart, I had everything someone could want, why was I unhappy? I must be crazy not to be happy with this life. I must ignore my heart telling me that something was wrong.
I continued to give, to give up, to try real hard to fit into the life I’d built with my husband, though I never felt as if I belonged in it. I always felt like an outsider because it wasn’t me. But I was supposed to want it. It’s what everyone else wanted, so I was told.

Then several traumatic events weighed on my heart. It’s funny how when we are feeling our lowest, our head turns to our hearts for the answer and not the other way around. If my life were to be over today, could I have said that I lived it? I think I’d only existed.

My heart told me it was time to be selfish. I needed to stop giving with nothing in return. I drew the proverbial line in the sand, and decided I was going to take some of myself back. I wanted to be happy, and it meant going back to the person I once was. My marriage ended when I wouldn’t allow things to remain still, unchanging. I needed something different, and I needed to be able to find it, but I’d given in for too long, and the life we’d created was too comfortable to chance finding a new way. I wasn’t worth the sacrifice of what we had built.

Looking back, I realize that it was all brought about because I should have never let go of my dreams from the beginning. I shouldn’t have given in. I should have taken the risk at the beginning of losing him and following my heart instead of years later. But even back then, I knew that he wouldn’t have followed me as I followed him. If I would have loved myself more, I would have admitted it then instead of years later.

I do try to learn from my mistakes, and this is one I hope to never repeat. But I still find myself giving more than I receive. Not asking for anything in return, afraid to ask for what I should deserve. Afraid that I will lose someone I love if I don’t give instead of take what I need.

So I had a reminder tattooed to me. A heart with wings to remind myself that the path to freedom and happiness is a journey through my heart. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way, and I don’t plan to ever forget it.