New Tattoo...New experience... NEW LIFE!!

This last month has been very tough for me and my family. We lost our oldest Daughter, Janeen, to a horse riding accident. It is terribly tragic, and I don't feel a need to revisit that experience here. I will however share a very intense and very unique experience I had yesterday. Let me give a little back story first.

About three months ago, I was able to connect with an artist that I felt was skilled enough to meet what I wanted to do so I could finish my right arm sleeve. We have been chatting and going over ideas and we set a date for 4-14-18, one month from the day we got the terrible news of Janeen.

I almost canceled the appointment after this event, but after talking to Donna, decided to keep it, and move forward.

I walked into this shop a little early, and it was not your "typical" tattoo shop Doctor Odds Tattoo in Pueblo Colorado, Dexter was the artist.

In the shop, it was very unique, with 30's big band music playing on the speakers, and various artifacts hanging on the wall of early man spearheads, the first metal spearheads and various art designs. A video game machine from the 80's and a nice cozy couch with various antique cameras and wheel chairs sitting around the lobby... I was not expecting this at all.

Oddly, I started to get nervous and was hoping I had made the right choice. I met Dexter and he started to get the area set up to do the tattoo. He showed me the designs he decided to use from the array of pieces I sent him for consideration.

Dexter is a kool kat....Comicon/Star Trek geek. Has all the comics and comicon stars pics all over the shop...Super nerdy cool!!

He chose the sun conure I had chosen as well as some of the foliage, flowers, a beetle I thought was cool. 

Now I was getting excited... I was ready to get going and see how this was going to unfold. I wanted to know where I was going to really hurt, and he showed me the bend of my arm, my wrist and my inner forearm. He stated

 "You will want to be other places when we are in those spots"

I understood completely and was ready to get going. 

He put the stencils on my arm and drew some other lines he wanted to follow, let me look at them and I said "LETS GO"

As we started on the outline, I went to a familiar place of the enjoyment of the process. The sound of the gun, the smell of the medicinal cleaner, the grinding feeling in my skin... It was a place I find enjoyable. I put my music in "Glass Animals Radio" on Pandora and settled in for the experience. 

As we moved along, I was watching the ink start to form on my arm and was really pleased with how it was going. I was not experiencing much pain, and then he started on the berries in the bend of my forearm. The pain was coming now...

 I was simply grinding through this part. It was intense, but not nearly as bad as I have had before in my armpit and on my chest. I was managing it pretty well. He got done with this area, I asked him for a quick break to stretch and relax my arm a bit. I took maybe 5 minutes, and sat down to continue. 

He started off on the conure. Not too bad, definitely not "cringe" worthy, but still enough to let one know where they are!

Then he started on the beetle... 

The pain was immediate and extremely intense. This is where things took a turn for me...

I closed my eyes, let myself go into the music, and allowed the pain to overcome me. I surrendered to it...

In this space, I found myself focused on the last month, memories of Janeen, the intensity of our suffering as individuals as well as a family. The pain grew with intensity, sometimes so much that it would jar my reality and cause me to lean in towards the gun and watch the ink inject into my skin. Then I would close my eyes and go back to that "place"

I found myself relating this pain to the pain of our loss, the suffering of those I love and my personal pain of the loss. This is very hard to explain, but if a person meditates (I have never been able to do this), this started to become an experience much like I have been told of people who loose themselves in meditation. 

I was totally engulfed in the experience of this pain, and I found actual relief in this place. I am not sure if it was simply a painful distraction, or a meditative state that I was embracing to relieve my inner suffering...But I will tell you this, I have never been in a place like this before. It was new, it was extremely painful, and at the same time, comforting.... I have never had this experience. 

If you are tattooed, you know that those moments of intense pain in tattooing, are simply that, MOMENTS and they will fade as the tattooist moves his brush from that space to the next. Then the pain comes again... 

Its waves....

pain....Intense pain...pain, release...  

Maybe that is the experience I am in now in this grief but have yet to find the release. 

pain.... intense pain....pain...then pain again.... and it starts over...

No relief... 

Maybe I was embracing the intensity of the pain in the tattoo because I knew the release was coming, I don't know... But it was a very intense experience...And I was fully aware of the entirety of it.. 

The artist would move from that spot, and then started on the flower next to the conure, my inner forearm.

I found great relief in this. The pain was intense, but it was more minimal than the beetle, I could handle this, but it was still very intense. Then he darkened the colors and started to dig into the piece to get the color in it... 

I went back to that place with the beetle. But this was a bit different. 

This was a bigger area to cover, so the intensity and the "pain" parts were longer in process... 

I would turn up my music, bow my head, close my eyes and could not do anything but just EXPERIENCE the pain. This was so incredibly powerful for me! I could do NOTHING but be PRESENT in it!!

I caught myself starting to weep... And I resisted... I held it, but I could actually feel the tears coming from my eyes... I surrendered to it!!

This continued with each petal. And on occasion he would go back and hit the beetle, I was lost at moment in all of it...

This whole process/experience lasted close to 30 minutes, give or take... 

At one point, towards the end of the flower, he stopped...

pain....intense pain, intense pain, intense pain......pain....release...

And then he wiped my arm with a cloth covered in rubbing alcohol....

This JARRED me out of the place I was in... I actually opened my eyes and looked at my arm, and just like in Pulp Fiction, I said...

"I said GODDAMN!"

And was overcome with the cooling of the cloth and the RELEASE... I almost started to cry... If I would have been standing, I would have buckled to that experience, it was an incredible sensation....... I even told Dexter...

"Holy shit man, that was an amazing experience!!"

I told him I had to take a second to gather myself and I re situated myself in the chair and swallowed my crying... The worst was over....a few more painful moments, but the INTENSITY was over. The experience was not gone, but the extreme suffering had passed. 

We had about 30 minutes left on the tattoo and he started on some other areas, and all I could do was BE with this experience I just had. I reviewed it closely as the noise of the gun faded in and out over the music in my ears...  It was truly unique, and so very powerful...It really took me places I had not gone before and really allowed me to SEE this grief. I could really get a GRIP on it...It was like I was standing beside it and looking at it while I was in the tattoo experience. My endorphins were at FULL TILT!!

After the tattoo was done, I stood up and had to pace the room for a couple of minutes. I was shaking, on the edge of a breakdown in tears and my endorphins were creating all of this as a pleasurable experience. It was so crazy intense... I have not ever had such a profound experience of an emotion and what the impact is of our emotions...

Then I saw the tattoo and it hit me one more time...

Pain and suffering are a process... I TRUST THE PROCESS!! There is no way something so beautiful can leave this world, and something beautiful NOT replace it. It will never be as beautiful as it once was, but it is beautiful all the same.

There is perfection in the process and although we cant see that perfection in the middle of the experience, it doesn't mean it isn't being created. 

I texted all my girls towards the end and they were jacking with me about the pain and that Nene is watching and laughing...And I KNOW she is somewhere, that's for sure....But I also think she would be JUST as pleased with this result as I am....Its BEAUTIFUL!!

So what was it?? Endorphin rushes clouding my reasonable thinking?? Or my reasonable thinking embracing my endorphins?

No matter what created that experience, I PAID ATTENTION to the process and I am paying attention to the result. It was truly a profound experience that took me to places I have never experienced.

I often wish that I could take the suffering from my girls, and although it kills me to see them experiencing it, I know that this pain is creating something beautiful in all of our lives. Might not be as beautiful, but it will be beautiful just the same...

I love you Janeen, and I love all you girls. You bring beauty to my life and even though you might be gone from here, it is because of you that I continue to experience beauty in the way I do. You did, and all you girls do, make my life a more beautiful place.

I wish I could love you more....I would CHASE IT!!