Minnesota Tattoo

I have a love/hate relationship with tattoos.

I love getting them. The needle has never bothered me and the small jabs of pain are actually nice, oddly enough. I enjoy the way that they look, even if mine are more direct and literal than most. The idea that these signifiers of specific moments in my life will be with me as long as I’m here (unless I lose an arm, in which case a lost tattoo would be the least of my worries) is comforting. That’s also at the crux of my hate when it comes to tattoos.

What I hate is the doubt. I hate the long, drawn-out back and forth that I go through in the lead up to getting one done. For as much as I enjoy having tattoos, I’m terrible at making the final decision to get one. It robs me of the spontaneity. As a matter of fact, a few years back I was supposed to get a tattoo with my father when he was out for a visit.

He was going to get a copy of my runic tattoo on his arm (which he did anyway, but not until he got back home) and I was going to get one of Sara’s name on my left arm. But my indecisiveness over the form and placement of my tattoo meant that we cancelled the whole thing. Damn shame.

I eventually ended up scrapping my plans to put Sara’s name on my arm altogether. This was partially because of the superstition involved with etching your partner’s name on your skin and partially because the script I was planning on using for her name, an ancient Italian script indigenous to the area her ancestors came from, ended up looking like the word “serf.”

Lately, I’ve been thinking often about how much where I grew up has influenced who I am today. I thought that it would be cool to have something to signify that on my body. Being that I like simple, clean designs, I ended up with the outline of the state of Minnesota with a red star where I grew up, the Red River Valley. I think it looks pretty damn cool.