Spring Thaw

This time last year I was in Seattle, had just stepped out of my house, pushed my bike out onto the sidewalk, triple checked that I’d shut the garage door behind me, and started my ride towards downtown Seattle for my tattoo appointment.

The lead up to the appointment was a series of unfortunate events; the artist wanted cash, of which I had none, and the first several ATMs I visited were all closed. Finally I arrived, breathless, late, anxious, and we started talking about size and placement.

She showed me the design, two Chinese-style dragons facing each other, printed out big enough to span the length of both shoulders.

“Can we make it smaller?” I asked.

The artist paused. Gave a sidelong glance at me. “Okay,” she said.

It didn’t feel like it was okay. My heart started to race; the walls closed in.

“I was thinking that I’d also like it in black ink,” I whispered.

“I’d really prefer if we kept it in color,” she replied.

Three hours later, I walked out of the studio, unlocked my bike, and rode home, numb. For the next several months I battled with revulsion and fascination, twisting in front of the mirror any chance I could to stare at my tattoo, tearing my eyes away when the panic started building, the dragons growing bigger, filling my vision, burning, blue and green and red; I want it to be smaller, I would like it better if it were in black and white, this isn’t what I wanted this isn’t what I wanted this isn’t what I wanted.

A year later, my therapist asked me if I thought about leaving the appointment when the conversation started to turn.

As the artist applied the stencil to my back, I imagined standing up, announcing, I don’t feel comfortable with the direction this is going, thanking her, getting ready to leave. I imagined how her expression might look, annoyed, shocked, angry. The embarrassment of putting my jacket back on while she watched me, silent, judging. Then I’d walk out the door, skin prickling, hot shame, imagine she turns to her fellow artist, say, what was she making such a big deal for, her coworker rolling their eyes, reply, some people are just difficult.

I stayed where I was.

Then two weeks later I got into a huge, emotionally devastating fight with my family, a hot, explosive war turning suddenly, freezingly cold, and my life splintered.

I built my self-image on what other people thought of me. I do things I think other people would like, ask for opinions from friends when applying for jobs, buying clothes, getting greenlit before sending thank you but I’m not interested in going on another date. A perceived hint of disapproval from anyone I loved had me second-guessing emails I sent, if a joke I made was rude, how I acted in public.

Suddenly without my family’s support after the fight, I was adrift at sea. I spent my days at work holding back tears, crying on my breaks, disinterested in leaving the house, so oversaturated with hurt and overwhelmed with unaddressed trauma that I didn’t feel anything at all.

At the end of last year I tried to write a recap of 2024, the highs and lows, what I learned. But it felt like I was over my head in tangled brambles, thick vines wrapping around my ankles, the thickets too dense to make sense of anything.

I had glimmers of good moments last year, like when I played hockey in Anchorage, or my summer in Beijing, or visiting Denver. But then I’d think about my tattoo, or the fight, or living in Montana again, and my dragons would writhe and burn, and the tighter the weeds would twist.

The shift came when I realized I was queer.

I feel… calm, I wrote in my journal one day, and again the following day, and the one after that. I feel calm. And much more confident, I realized. No longer trying to control every aspect of myself, wondering if what I said made me likeable. No longer obsessed with looking effortless and put-together.

I stopped overanalyzing every interaction I had, started attending events without bracing myself for them beforehand.

With the help of therapy, tensions in my family thawed, and last week I showed up to my appointment having talked about and processed every big emotional event from the last year. I was all caught up, except for one thing: my tattoo. I’d never brought it up because there were always bigger issues to address, but finally, the heaviest thing on my shoulders were my dragons.

My therapist was quiet after I finished my story. Then she said, “your tattoo sounds like a representation of the person you were at the time, someone you aren’t anymore. It’s a reminder of all the ways you’ve changed. If you went into that tattoo studio as who you are now, I guarantee you’d handle the situation differently.”

All of a sudden, the raging fire dwindled, guttered, and went out. My dragons curled into my skin for the first time, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

So. Am I out of the weeds yet?

No. There will always be more weeds.

But for now, I’ve reached a clearing, and the sun is shining.