Follow This Map: Some Fragments of History

At this point in time a certain percentage of my body is covered in ink… but you wouldn’t know that from looking straight at me… not unless I told you… not unless I’ve shared myself with you…

I hide my ink the same way I hide most everything else about me… It’s covered from plain sight… from the rest of the population… from common knowledge… It’s a personal part of me that only a privileged few get to see… And though that number has increased over time it is still controlled… because even once you gain the knowledge that I have tattoos… you may not get to see them all… and most will never hear the story that goes along with them…

My tattoos are a map of the life that I have lead… they are “scars” and they tell stories.  This is a map that you cannot read without a key… with pathways that trail off and head in opposite directions… detours where you wouldn’t expect them to be… There is no seeable end and no seeable beginning.  It is all one.  And while I could highlight the road ahead for you… and tell you how to survive the twists, turns, and drop offs… this is a course that most don’t stick with… they deem it not worth their time… they give up… they walk away… And I don’t want to waste my time.

This collection of ink that I started years ago has grown steadily as I have grown as a person… It is both chromatic and colored… large and small… done by others… done by me… done on me… It’s a collection of stories etched on pale skin that I felt needed to be told… an incomplete narration… It’s a map.  It’s a puzzle.  It’s a beautiful tragedy.  It’s all mine.  It’s my life.  It’s my story.

On a Certain Day in February (02/25/09)

I’ve written this at least a dozen times already and I don’t feel like I’m doing it justice… The details to this picture are lost at sea and I’m unable to pull them back in and put them on this canvas… For some reason the blues and the greens don’t seem nearly as pretty as they are in my mind.  I know the portrait that I want to paint… it’s almost 5 years old and has been sitting in storage in the back of my mind since its occurrence… but this archive is a maze of twists and turns that my brain refuses to let me navigate… it’s trying to stop me from placing this photograph on the wall for all to see.

There are few things in my life that I can pinpoint the exact moment or event that caused them to happen… That thing that caused the change to occur… That thing that made me fall in love… or fall out of love.  This is one of those things though… when I know the exact moment… the very thing that is responsible… the lead in to this very moment… and I want to tell it right because it is that very important but I don’t know if I can… I stop myself every time I start to tell it… I’ll trail off… I’ll leave the important details out… Change the subject… Ignore the question.  But I can’t do that anymore.  This archeologist needs to start digging through the mess of memories she’s trapped inside.  I need to figure out just who I am… without all the complications… or in spite of…

There’ve been several people that have had a profound effect on my life… people that have had a hand in making me who I am… some of them are my best friends… some of them are no more than casual acquaintances.  Nicole was somewhere in between that.  She was the arrow that pointed me down the path that I am on… instead of letting me continue on the path I had intended to follow.  This wasn’t her intention though… I’m sure of that… because none of this really happened until after she died.

This is something that I don’t normally talk about… It’s hard and it’s painful and I just want it to stop hurting so goddamned much and let me go on with my life.  Just let me be.  I don’t remember the exact day it happened… I don’t really remember anything except that I wanted to die… I wanted to die so badly that I got a whole bunch of sleeping pills… and stared at them for hours.  I’m not sure what it is that stopped me from doing it exactly… I don’t even fully remember having got them but I know that I did… I was that done.

There are 63 episodes of Six Feet Under and I watched them all in two months.  I often attribute the show with saving my life… at least in my mind I do.  It was at the end of those two months that I felt better… almost as if by magic… It felt like… for the first time in a long time I could breathe again… I felt relief… and I didn’t want to die anymore.  This was the thing that got me into television.  I knew… somehow… that I wanted to do this for someone else… save them in their moment of need by writing something so powerful that it just… erases the pain from their life… and all it took for me to get here was a loss so great it still haunts my soul.

The Dialogue of my Anxiety

I feel like a paper doll… I keep waiting for a strong wind to just come along and… blow me away.  Free me from this world… this life.

You don’t get it.  You’re freaking out once a month because you can’t control your life and it isn’t the same as… what I go through every day…

I constantly have this feeling of drowning in quicksand.  I’m totally helpless.  Surrounded.  Being pulled down below the surface.  I try to claw my way to the top… but the more I try… the further I seem to sink.

It’s a terrifying and completely hopeless feeling that you just can’t understand unless you’ve been there… Unless you’ve had this feeling of free falling without a parachute… hurtling towards that inevitable moment of impact…

I worry about things that haven’t even happened yet.  And I worry so much that my basic ability to function is compromised.  There are times when I can’t… be around people.  I can’t think.  Sleep.  Eat.  It’s such an overwhelming feeling… like I can’t escape.

And these things that I worry about… Maybe they’ll never happen.  But I worry about them still.  They root themselves in my brain and just… they take over.

I hate the looks I get from people.  The judgment in their eyes.  And don’t tell me they don’t… stare.  I know what staring looks like.  What it feels like… I’ve been stared at all my life…

People look right through you and right at you at the same time… and they stare… and they judge.  As if they know me.  As if they have a clue.

And then there’s this physical pain… like someone has stacked a dozen cinder blocks onto my chest.  And every time I try to breathe my lungs just won’t expand… Every attempt for air feels like glass shards are tearing through my system… splitting my insides apart… refusing to let me go…

That’s what it’s like… every day for me… from the time I wake up until I fall back asleep…

And no, I can’t just stop having anxiety.  So, please, stop asking me to… Because, believe me, I would if I could… I’d just flick a magic switch and turn everything off… Go back to normal… Whatever that is.

Rudyard Kipling's "If--"

If you can keep your head when all about you

  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

  But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

  Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

  And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

  If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

  And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

  And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

  And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

  To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

  Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

  Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

  If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

  And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!