The Tree of Life

This shouldn't come as a surprise, but for a very long time, I've wanted to get a tattoo.  In middle school, I would draw on myself with those crap gel pens that always seemed to clog the second week you purchased them.  In high school, traced my arms out in eyeliner, or I dipped a fine pin into fabric paint and dotted my arms with self-made designs (sometimes hoping that I would slip and accidentally tattoo myself for real).

Even now, I'll ink random designs onto my fingers and wrists during long morning meetings:

Black Lotus Smuggler!

Some attempts admittedly work better than others.

From a pretty early age, I've wanted a phoenix tattoo of some sort.  Fenghuang, the Chinese phoenix, is a mythological creature that symbolizes virtue and grace.  Often paired with the dragon, it is supposed to represent the female presence.  I must have drawn dozens of pictures, but this is the latest incarnation:

The characters in the center translate to "fortitude" (and since I am actually asian, I feel no shame in having hanzi branded across my body), while the 3 jade orbs represent my grandmother, my mother, and my sister.  For some time, I was convinced that I was going to get this cleaned up and then tattooed on my wrist.  However, of late, my design du jour has been to trace the outline of the veins on my wrist, which when pronounced, resemble a leafless tree:

For what I think are pretty obvious reasons, I've taken to calling it the Tree of Life.  However, I've refrained from getting either the Phoenix or the ToL actually printed on my wrist for a few reasons:

1 - As with coloring my hair, I fear the stigma associated with tattoos, which is far stronger in negativity.  And unlike hair, which can be easily altered, a tattoo isn't so easy to hide.  I refuse to put it anywhere like my back or another easily covered place.  First and foremost, my point in getting a tattoo would be for me to see it. Not others.

2 - More specifically to ToL, my veins will shift and move over time, so the meaning behind the tattoo will become kind of null.  Frankly, as my body ages, the skin will sag, and nothing will look as good as the first day I got it.

3 - Tattoos are really damn permanent.

People grow and change all the time.  Our tastes, our political ideologies, our loves and lovers.  And as I grew, my tree would not.  My phoenix, my symbol of strength, would fade and lose its beauty.  And I cannot assure myself in any measure that as I get older and likely more austere that I will not look back on my decision and find my impulses the regrettable mark of a younger woman.

That's not to say I'm against the idea entirely.  Part of me (an admittedly large part) still wants a tattoo because I lack self-restraint and because I like expressing myself through art.  But until I can really seriously convince myself of my convictions towards the designs I have put so much thought into, my body will probably remain ink-free.

Until the next.