Why Fire?

In my tiniest tattoo lies the one with the most powerful meaning for me. It’s also the body art that is most ridiculed or questioned. It isn't the most expertly done one either. Fuego (Fire in Spanish) tattooed in my cursive handwriting. I never thought I’d get a word tattooed on my body. As a writer, for some reason I never wanted to mark my skin with words. I wanted to decorate it with art.

But, then there’s this word. Fire. What is fire to you? I think of fire as power. It is one of the most powerful disasters out there, burning everything in its path. Fire is intensity. Intense. This word held a harsh meaning for years.

Highly emotional, wild, and intense—all these words often used to define a woman in a negative way. At least that’s the way people often intended it to be.

Let me go back to Tiny Tina.

Tiny Tina was, in fact, small but with a personality larger than life. I ran wild in every way possible, catching grasshoppers in open fields behind our ranch house (just one of the many communes I lived in as a child growing up in a cult), caught fish in the local ponds, pretended to be a gymnast on fences, and joined in with the big boys in soccer.

I rolled down hills with our dogs, stopping to catch my breath with leaves in my hair and I’d never care. I was always found doing anything and everything I was and wasn’t supposed to. A little girl with wild hair, unstoppable energy, and always finding ways to be naughty, I was what should be the urban dictionary definition of wild child.

Soon tiny Tina wasn’t so tiny anymore, although you wouldn’t call me tall by any means. As a pre-teen, oh girl, my emotions were all over the place. I had no qualms in showing them either, much to the chagrin of those around me. If I felt it, I dealt it, and tears would flow whenever they saw fit to.

As I got a little older, I started channeling this energy and emotion into my style. I danced between being a goth and “skater chic.” I wrote poems upon poems, kissed all the boys and some of the girls, danced when I wanted, rebelled against anyone with authority, snuck out at night, smoked, drank, and fell in love with every boy who passed my way.

As a teenage girl with a propensity to be so vivacious and stubborn, being raised in a strict cult with rules and God’s judgement for everything you can think of, I was often the topic of commune meetings, told over and over again that how I was, was too much and tried as I might, I just couldn’t be calm and subdued like they wanted me to be.

Over the years since entering adulthood, I have been told over and over again, “You are so intense” and “You’re very emotional” and every single time these words stung. I often thought to myself, “I’m not supposed to be this way, am I?” Women aren’t supposed to be crazy or intense. How many times did I hear boyfriends talk about their crazy exes?

In recent years, through rejection, changes, difficulties, and adapting, I begun to see myself in a different light. Yes, I tend to feel a broad range of emotions seemingly all the time. I may be calm and collected on the outside, but honey, there is always a fire raging within.

I’m passionate. In art, intimacy, goals, my dreams, my fears, my connections, my anger, my happiness. It is all intense. And so, I realized, while fire may burn and destroy, when channeled correctly, it can light up lives. It is also healthy, inviting, warming, life-giving, and welcoming.

And, so I’ve taken this word that was once a negative and I’ve made it my positive. A mark on my skin serving as a reminder that it’s okay to be me, to choose myself in my entirety. I do not exist to make other people happy.

As a nod to living half my life in Latin countries, I got my tattoo in Spanish. A large part of who I am is because of my chemical makeup and personality traits while other aspects are from where I was raised for part of my life, transitioning from a young teenage girl into an adult woman in Latin America.

I am intense. I am emotional. I am fire. And, I am finally okay with that.