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Lately, I am finding myself feeling a little stranded in inertia.  I'm past the mid-way point, headed towards change, change that is inevitable, change that isn't worth fighting, change that I myself want and need --- but I am frozen.  The next steps in my life are starting, and I'm so excited about them, but there is just a little piece of me that wishes almost everything could be different.  It's a sharp pain in my gut, a constantly nagging feeling that I could have, should have, done of lot of things better in the last several years.  

The most constant source of comfort for me, beside a couple of amazing friends, is my left wrist.   I think a lot of you know that I have several tattoos (and piercings, but I digress), and there are multifaceted reasons for that.   In a very real way, my body art is a physical reminder that sometimes breaking inertia causes enormous amount of pain; the pain itself, however, is transitory.   They are all important to me, but my wrist, Ganesh, is really special; it was completed in a time of total emotional wreckage, a time that I now can see was The Beginning of The End.  Long ending, huh?  

It reminds me every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, that while there's a lot of bullshit to weed through in life, I only have to do it until there's nothing left to wade through.  Inspirational?  It's not really.  But it's real.

When people who don't have tats or piercings notice mine, they scrunch up their faces and say "but didn't that hurt?"

Well, I just paid someone to shove a needle in my flesh, over and over again, mostly likely until I bleed.  Duh.  Why would you think it wouldn't hurt?  People really are jackasses sometimes, right?

So fine, I admit it hurts.  I don't find solace or peace in the pain. I don't wake up on Tattoo Day and say "yippee!  Today is going hurt but it's all for the best so it's a-ok!"  Why do it then?

Do I get my jollies from some sort of physical pain?  (I don't.)
Is it some sort of rite of passage? (Not really.)
Could it be that I'm crying out for attention?  (Not even, my friends, a little bit.)

Instead it's about acceptance; there is nothing yet that I have found worth doing in my life that doesn't ultimately cause discomfort and pain.   That stuff that hurts is the stuff that I later appreciate; I find serenity in healing.

I bet it seems like I think I'm pretty clever, but I don't.  If you know me though, you've heard me say that about tattoos over and over again.  And you probably figured out that though it's true about tattoos, I'm not really talking about them at all.  I'm talking, instead, about heartache.

I'm talking about losing a turtle pendant, from someone who loved me once, several years ago, and finding it my laundry room floor.  The other day.  The same laundry room floor I've been walking on for seven years.  When I saw it, it struck me as funny what I can find when I'm not longer looking.  And it's funnier still, that a gold turtle pendant from a lifetime ago can bring back so many complicated emotions that I smiled while my lips quivered.  At the same time.

I'm talking about splitting up pets who have never known anyone except the same two people and the rest of their clan, for their entire lives.  And the teary eyes when you realize a clean break from them is kindest to everyone involved.  Maybe it sounds silly to you, but right at this very moment, everyone of them, of us, is missing another.

And, I'm talking about making choices I never wanted to make, because it was best for the life I thought I wanted.  Except it wasn't for the best, and there is no resolution, no overturned decision, no taking it back.  I just wake up and forge ahead, hoping next time is the better one.

There's more things, of course, that flood my brain almost by the minute.  Many about TxB.   Many about other stuff, and not all of them sad.  Some of them are scary and wonderful, like a new relationships and second chances.

The entry doesn't have the a title or a boiled-down, punch-line ending like the others, and that's why it's taken a few days to post it.  I work on it a little everyday, but it's finally occurred to me that if there was ever an entry that wasn't neat and tidy, this is the one that can be.  The whole point is that stuff takes the time it takes, regardless of frustration, sadness, panic or love.   It will be what it is regardless of what you call it.  And, tattoos will hurt, then scab, itch and scar, and you'll be left with, after careful tending, a perfectly healed reminder of the process.

That's what makes it worth it.