Of living up to tattoos

There’s a tattoo on my wrist. Have I told you about it?

I don’t think so… Even if I have, just bear with me this once and listen to the story again.

The need to get inked started because well,  it was the coolest form of self-expression in the late 2000s (and it wasn’t as mainstream as it is today!). I went from wanting to get the Guns n Roses emblem to Bob Dylan’s name in a matter of a year. Don’t judge! Late teens and early twenties are meant for confusion. I’ve found that confusion often teaches you so much more than clarity ever can.

My younger sister — my fashion idol & in general a goddess in my eyes —  had decided that she wanted to get a scorpion tattoo, her sun sign. And it had been over a year or so that she had consistently wanted the scorpion. She is one of those lucky people who spend very little time being confused and emerge with clarity without any embarrassing incident bearing witness to the emergence of said clarity. I envy that.

We both shared a room. And we’d both chat with each other until one of us (usually me) fell asleep. The chats would be general gossip, life goals, music or even deep philosophy. In fact, my sister is a huge influence on anchoring down my floating, ADHD-struck mind. One night, I asked her how did she know that she wanted the scorpion. I can’t decide on one thing. Her answer was simple, she wanted a tattoo that was her. “I’ll always be a proud Scorpio ok?” she told me.

So if I had to follow in my life-coach’s footsteps, I just had to find out what was ‘me’. Draconian task. Things that I liked kept changing far too often. What was that one thing that remained constant & consistent? What was the one thing I was, am and will always be, no matter what?

The answer was simple. A writer.

So I decided to get a quill tattooed on my right wrist, pointing towards my thumb. When I got the tattoo, I was struggling to write my first novel. And as the ink marked my identity on my wrist, I promised myself this —  As long as the blood flows through my veins, the ink shall flow through my pen.

Sounds dramatic? Well, what’s an author without any drama! The past two years have been difficult as my family suffered two major losses. Every time I sit down to write, my late grandfather & grandmother, who are a piece of my heart, always emerge. It gets overwhelming to write anything outside of work. But I need to get over it.

I need to get back to writing without my emotions getting the better of me. I want to see new characters. Watch them take over my life… And for that to happen, I must write something every single day. I won’t post everything I write to the blog, because some stuff is deeply personal. But I will write each day. Even if it is a couple of hundred words. If nothing else, I owe it to my tattoo.