Nice girls don't get chest tattoos

A friend of mine's lady friend made this proclamation.  This was presumably after she saw my old school chest piece. Well, honestly, my immediate reaction is to say "bitch, you don't know me," but then, I don't know her either, apart from the tattoo quip.  However, this is a point of contention with me.  People look at my tattoo and think I'm some sort of wild woman or reckless or...

Truth is, my tattoo is a line in the sand.  It separates the utter crazy of my childhood/adolescence from my adult life, which I am currently struggling to get a grip on.  Consider it like a bomb going off, obliterating from memory pretty much everything from age 14 to 22.  I'm not saying 22 on has been a pile of roses. It hasn't.  Hasn't.  But it's been a ride, and I remember most of it, but most importantly I was in control of everything that happened to me, good or bad.

Control has become paramount in my life.  I succumbed to panic attacks and agoraphobia because I had no control over my life.  I mean think about it.  As a kid, you have no control over anything.  When you wake, eat, sleep, learn and exercise is all dictated by adults, and you have no say.  You can even say "I feel sick and don't want to be here," and people will look at you and say "you look fine.  Sit down til the lesson's over."  The funny thing was, I never really perceived this as a lack of control.  No kid really does.  But when I hit about...oh, 15 or 16, suddenly I was hit with a wall of anxiety.  I started feeling trapped on the way to school on the bus, in class, in the lunch room, in study hall; I would have panic attacks all day every day until I finally got a chance to go outside for soccer or track practice.  

Now, for a person as socially oblivious as I was (and still kind of am) how the hell did I get stuck with a socially-related anxiety disorder?  My issues stem from my stomach, which has always been sensitive and is just a bit off.  I have a hyper-acidic stomach and GERD (look it up) which is exacerbated by stress, so that isn't helpful since stressing about my stomach would only perpetuate a cycle.  I always worry my stomach will hurt in public and I'll have no where to go to be alone so I can just be miserable in peace. So this developed into agoraphobia, aversion to populated events, or any room populated with anyone other than myself.

Anyway, socially oblivious me getting agoraphobia, a condition hung much on the actions/reactions of others to your condition.  Weird. I never thought about it as an adolescent, of course, but now, looking back, I understand this condition sprang up because other people were imposing constant control over me.  I went to a private Catholic school, with uniforms, four minutes (not five, four) between classes, few teachers willing to give out hall passes, and an overall atmosphere oppressive to difference. These days I pride myself on being odd.  I don't know what I thought then.  I don't think I though about. Anyway, I didn't drive, so really, I was stuck at that place all day every day no matter how bad I felt.  No way out.  So I would sit in class, gripping the desk, white knuckled (so to speak), and became a master at putting on a positive face. Then I would close myself in the bathroom for three of the four minutes between classes and silently cry as hard as I could to relieve stress.

My days started early, up at 5:30 AM, bus by 6:30 (it took about 1.5 hours to drive the 23 miles to my high school every morning...Washington DC traffic 15 years ago, and it's only gotten worse), school 8-3, sports practice 3:30-5, home by 6:30 or 7, dinner, homework 9-11 PM.  I got those couple homework hours to myself.  Any time I wasn't in a car/bus or at school my mother was hovering.  She's a worrier.  She's also histrionic.  It's from her I learned expressing my actual discomfort led to catastrophe.  Better to keep a stiff upper lip. So, 5:30 AM to 9 PM I kept up a stony facade.  Then I got about 6 hours sleep.  And then the day began again.

So maybe it was inevitable that I snapped.  Unsnapping has been a sliver by sliver process.  College was my first taste of what adult life might be like (before, you know, it swung back into the oppressive stage again with work and all), getting to walk out of a room when I wanted to, eat whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted to, decline or accept social invitations as I saw fit.  It was a slow process coming out of my shell, but I did it, panic be damned.  I'll elaborate on my mid-college epiphany an current coping techniques in another post.

So after college, I felt like a new woman.  I'd begun to figure out my triggers, that trapped crazy feeling would alert me to shift locations (and eventually I'd just learn to kibosh the rising panic feeling if I left the situation or not) and I could actually go to rock shows, be on planes, go to festivals and house parties and bars as I pleased.  I had a blast going places I literally never thought I could go two years ago.  It was like standing with my face in the wind, smelling Europe roll in across the Atlantic.  I could do anything.

So I got a tattoo drawing a line in the sand.  

And on the other side, this side, was a woman with a future as wide open as the west.  And that's where this woman was going.

So I got a tattoo to mark the break between that girl and this woman, and I operate now to repair and buoy this woman, and remind her that the future still has promise, even though dying tomorrow holds no menace. I got a tattoo to remind me every time I look in the mirror, the only way to live is to look ahead and not to dwell in the past.

I got a tattoo to draw a line in the sand, and it says "Never Look Back."