Inked

Getting a tattoo is just like going through a breakup. It is messy, painful, you lose blood and some sleep, but it is totally worth it!

Stage 1: The act

The minute the needle starts piercing through your skin, and you lose the first drop of blood, you begin to think if it is worth it at all.  And this is when the tattoo artist starts looking like a dopehead who will not hesitate to plunge his needle right through your heart if you make even a slight whimper.

Scissorhands will scissor your hand right off

Stage 2: Denial

The morning after I got inked, I woke up to a plasma-oozing kitty cat that was now permanently etched on my skin. Permanently. No looking back. I flipped so much and so hard, and my screams rattled the neighbourhood. And then the denial began – Maybe the ink won’t stay. Maybe it will run out.  Maybe my hand will be good as new the day after. Right? RIGHT? No.

Stage 3: Anger

In exactly 48 hours, your beautiful tattoo starts looking like this:

The kitty-gets-dipped-in-slime tattoo

Yes. Scabs form, it becomes itchy, the skin feels tight, and you would do anything to get that goddamn heavy feeling off your heart (and your wrist, in this case). I also wanted to kill Mr.J, my genius friend and tattoo-partner-in-crime for talking me into this!

It did not help that a trip home was scheduled around the same time. If my mother’s glares could kill, all of you would have been sitting across the fire singing Kumbaya for my peaceful passing.

Stage 4: Guilt

So the tattoo is there but it still does not belong to you. After the scabs fall off, a thin transparent layer of skin forms over the tattoo. In tattoo-lang, it is called the onion skin. This does not fall off until the Halley's Comet zips past the sky five times. And then the introspection begins: So, why did I do this to myself? What went wrong? Was the tattoo an overcompensation for my other failures? Does the tattoo really look like a cat? What the hell was I thinking? Do I even like cats? 

Stage 5: Depression

The onion skin just does not fall off. The ink looks faded. Your friends still scoff. WebMD makes life tougher with all those graphic articles about how chemical tattoo dye infections can result in possible amputation. And your hand still needs baby oil every couple of hours, to not look like King Joffery at the Purple Wedding.

My wrist could die a hundred times like this, and my onion skin would still be there!

Okay!! Maybe not that bad. But waiting for this piece of skin to fall off has been the longest wait of my life.

Stage 6: Sweet, sweet freedom :)

And just like that, one day you wake up to this beautiful tattoo, shiny again, beaming at you. 

Inked!

And despite the melodramatic and symbolic crumbling of life that was supposed to be explained through this post, all you have got to remember is that - it always comes back together! And just like that :)