In my own skin.

Out of the many tattoos I have imprinted on my skin, the ones linked to my parents seem to catch the most attention. The curiosity they spark always makes me laugh a little since my parents, like most, were the only ones against me getting tattoos in the first place. To be honest, I actually would have never placed myself as someone to get tattoos dedicated to their parents, but as my fathers health declined in 2007, a need for closeness within my family unit was sparked in me.

I’ve spent most of my life feeling like an outsider, never cool enough to be considered popular and not smart enough to hang with the book crowd. Since childhood, I felt on the outside of my family and this created great separation and conflict within me. When I was a kid I loved creating and had a grand imagination. Often I would play with temporary tattoos and think maybe one day I would get one, I was never entirely sure what, but I just thought it was probably going to be a thing I would do at some point. The older I got the more sure of an idea it seemed and in my last year of high school I was dead set on getting a tattoo as soon as I turned 18.

After all this time I still didn’t entirely know what I wanted but I knew how I wanted to look, I liked the idea of a few small tattoos along my arms so I started there by getting a star on the inside of my right wrist as my very first. There was no real specific meaning to this tiny star, but I thought it would look good. Getting a tattoo was definitely a “cool” thing to do at this point, but I never felt like it was something that would help me fit in, I just felt like it was...me? And now that I was governmentally certified as an adult I began creating who I saw as my adult self.

Me being seen as an “adult” in the eyes of the government made me feel like I had some legs to stand on against my mother’s iron fist. From my first ink, my body art collection quickly grew. The small star I started with seemed to grow larger every time I got the line work fixed and since the gun was already on, I would add another. I moved on to a small one behind my ear that was and still is an illegible mistake and then made the decision to go big with a dove on my ankle, my mother was extra mad about that one.....

For the most part I was dabbling in seemingly meaningless body art collecting, trying to claim back something that was always my own; my body. It was empowering to me that I was allowed to do something so serious without my mother’s permission and she hated every part of that.

My mother raised me to her obedience and my father was so passive that as long as no one was interrupting his shows, he wasn’t bothered. The pain and projection that was imprinted on me was that I was not valid, my voice was not valid, my thoughts were not valid and my feelings were most certainly, not valid. In the eyes of my mother, she knew best and her best was to protect me from the world at all cost, unfortunately, the cost was my sovereignty. The little bit of power that the age of 18 gave me made me feel like I was finally in the fast lane to freedom, with no slowing down in sight.

In the summer of 2006 my world took a turn, the truth of my fathers health was finally revealed. For a year or so leading up to this my dad had a cough, this cough was annoyingly loud and kept getting more and more frequent as time went on. You hope that these things don’t lead anywhere else, but in this case, we were wrong. My father was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis; a lung disease that seemed to progress extremely fast. Within six months of his diagnosis he was sent home from work and forced into retirement; he could barely walk without nearly passing out. Though the state of my fathers health seemed to worsen week to week, I still wanted to move out of my parents house and the small town I was raised in, to the city of Toronto by the early fall of 2007.

As a family, we didn’t know what the future held and the uncertainty kept me in a constant state of ignorance and avoidance. I choose to ignore my reality and go ahead with my plans of moving to the city. I wanted to be with my friends, be an artist and finally live my life as I wish. Leading up to my move out, the emotions of my family were running extremely high, by late winter 2007 my father was now unconscious in a medically induced coma awaiting a much needed lung transplant. My sister was young and emotionally turbulent, my mother was stressed and trying to hold herself together, and I was completely and utterly disconnected. Life was different and we didn’t know what was next. Finally, In May after visiting with my father just the night before and hearing that it’s possible we should be preparing for the worst, an early morning call from my mother delivered the news we were all waiting for; my father would be receiving a double lung transplant the next morning and things were looking promising.

My life, which once felt completely normal suddenly seemed like something out of a movie and I was as much a part of it as I was a viewer. The transplant was a success and for the years to come we all tried to adjust to our new normal as best as we possibly could. I moved for the first time in my life and to a new city at that, the same day my father was released to come home from the rehabilitation centre. My level of avoidance was at an all time high but now, with my father needing to see doctors in the city quite regularly we were able visit and catch up. Those times are how I remember him best, he was forever changed after going though one of the biggest challenges in his life, and that was just the beginning. He was here though, like really here and actively listening and wanting to talk and to see me, he was always more on the sensitive side but it was different now, it meant more now. My mother was his primary caretaker and with that, I finally saw both my parents as these raw and vulnerable people and their relationship had a respect level I hadn’t seen before. My relationship with them was definitely better than ever before, but it wasn’t near the intimate bond I craved. In my attempts to understand my own feelings I decided to get some permanent fixtures to display my new found relationship with them. Before getting inked I would always see things in certain spots, I loved the idea of having something matching on the tops of my wrists. Since my parents were born chronologically, putting their birth years right there on top seemed like the best place to show my love for them. A week after getting it done, my dad was back in the hospital undergoing treatment for some fluid found on his lungs. I proudly showed my dad the tattoos and he cried and said to me “why would you do that? Please don’t get any on your face, you’re so beautiful now, just don’t get any of your face” .....not exactly the response I was looking for. I was so confused as to how he could not feel incredibly touched by my actions. His less than positive response didn’t deter me though and I went on to get the emblems of the four suits of cards on inside my elbows for them as well. I knew they met on a blind date at a card game and I thought it was cute to finally know that story. They didn’t care for that one either, I barely cared for it too, but it was there, very permanent and still reminded me of them. In the few years to come my dad consistently found himself fighting for his health, receiving a lung transplant wasn’t a life saver like we all thought and have since learned it is actually just a “life extender”. Being almost 60 and doing his best to accept this different life, the challenges just kept piling up. In 2010, close to 3 years after he received this amazing life extending gift of a transplant my father passed away. I sunk into myself and processed his death in my own way, mostly by becoming incredibly emotionally distant from my family and extremely overly emotional with my friends. I was finally adjusting to having parents who were being more open and more loving than ever before, to now suddenly it all being gone. I had my tattoos, I had my memories but I no longer had my foundation. My fathers death brought an unravelling to myself unlike anything I could have ever prepared for. I spent years running from the pain and the faster I ran, the faster it caught up with me. It’s been 10 years and I have finally been able to understand and make peace.

As much as I love my father, as much as I am thankful my parents are my parents, I now understand the tattoos were my way of trying to get close to them. All I ever wanted was for them to see me and to love me just as I am, just as I did them. In my unconscious state I believed I was showing them love by way of getting tattoos for them, but now I understand that I was really just looking for the validation that I was a good daughter. Though they weren’t always able to tell me in the ways that I needed, I know now that I didn’t have to do anything for them in order to be considered a good daughter, I just had to be me.