Bioshulambua

Most people get tattoos because they mean something. I, myself, am covered. My sleeve is only hours away from being finished, but I am seasoned with a variety of artists work. I have my children’s names. I have a couple matching tattoos from past relationships, and no real ink addict would be complete without a few regrettable impulse pieces as well.

The Om I drew myself in 2004 while on a school trip to Italy because it made me feel a peace I haven’t felt since getting off the plane in Milan. I was only 13, but I didn’t need to look at map because subconsciously I had meandered the streets of Rome and Pompeii somewhere in a past life.

The bizarre calligraphy on my hand is actually the word “Love” written in Elvish from the J.R. Tolkien series. My ex has the same word on his left hand, so our hands had a type of His/Hers aspect to them. Yes, I’m actually well versed in writing elvish because, why not?

I had a friend. I met him at a rave in 2006, and we shared many long and strange trips over a course of two years. Really, he came with a crew. They all had been vast elementary friends, and welcomed me into their clique without hesitation. I think it was somewhere around 3 years of knowing him that I realized I loved him.

We tried dating a few times, but it was never “really the right time” for either of us. We had something different though. Something I can’t say I’ve shared with anyone before, or even to this day. He poked and prodded something deep within my psyche and was a catalyst to a bountiful cornucopia of hippy and woo-woo perspectives that I still carry deep within my soul. We shared more than your typical Gemini-Virgo symbiotic relationship. It went deeper, and further into either of our subconscious minds than I can really describe. He taught me about sacred geometry, archetypes, and would often draw out road maps that connected science, religion, and supernatural phenomena. I think he knew more about life’s answers than he ever told me.

Which is why he’s no longer with us. A few of our last night spent together I would fall asleep and wake up a few hours later to get water, or sit in the living room to wait out my episode of insomnia, to which I would find him drawing, writing, or playing music and softly serenading the quiet witching hours of the night.

He called me DeeSan Louise McGonagall. I called him Bioshulambua the Rowanda Warlord. Stupid nicknames created from word salad induced by sleepless nights and too many days of LSD and not enough food. In 2008 I got pregnant, not by him, and had my first son. In 2012 I had my second son. His family called him “Boshy”, which I morphed into my own “Bioshy”, but I don’t think I actually used his real name the full last year of knowing him. He was always there, even when no one else was around because, I was sober and no longer the raging party kid with the best blow.

He was that friend who I could go months or years without talking to, and the moment we made contact, we picked right up as though our previous conversation had only ended minutes prior. He had just returned from college and I had picked up the bottle again. We picked up quick dates, which were intermittent and regularly canceled due to hangovers or work. A few times he showed up unannounced to my door, we would talk into the wee hours of the morning, the sun would rise, while the days continued to wax and wane during our parallel paths.

We were supposed to have breakfast together on a Friday, but I was so hungover I needed a little hair of the dog and chose not to drive that day. Sunday morning, around 11am I got a phone call while I was at work. A mutual friend who had been out of the country called me so I assumed we would all be gathering soon. “I’m at work, I’ll call you when I’m home.” I’m glad I was home when he told me our friend was no longer with us. People who I hadn’t seen in close to ten years emerged from all corners of the earth to remember a humanoid with a soul that was too bright for this planet.

The day after his funeral I swore I would never drink again (this took me two years to finally accomplish, and partially because I was drowning my sorrows). I got the unalome over my heart with his birthday and day of passing because I felt that he had finally reached the enlightenment he so tirelessly searched for. He was an old-old soul, clever, and an ember that ignited many fires. Even in death he showed me how powerful love is, and the unpredictable and tumultuous body of water that is grief. Since his physical leave from my life I have watched many of my friends lose their friends, and I have continued to lose non-family in unexpected ways. I feel prepared now when grief and loss kicks in the door of my life. It’s more cyclical. More predictable. Easier understood. By no means is it bearable, but I know that I will continue to build my life around the gaping holes of my heart, always aware of the bottomless abyss that is emptiness when love is split in half never to be bound again.

On the inside of my wrist is the semicolon for suicide awareness. Another story to be told another time. But the most recent of my four connected overflowing tattoos is the seed of life. Four years after his passing I kept seeing “signs” that I should investigate and understand more about sacred geometry. It’s too much to put into a footnote here what exactly I’ve observed about this particular pattern, but if I have one thing to share insight too is this:

The holy trinity, the triangle, the celtic knot, the trifecta that is so recurrent through human history might have but one more piece to the puzzle we can’t quite yet see. So, therefore the answer to life is:

43.