Friday, September 4, 2015

Today I got a tattoo.

This tattoo means a lot to me. I swore I would never get a tattoo unless it really meant something, as I didn't want to mark up my body permanently for something that I might be only temporarily passionate about. The semicolon, however, tells a story. Taken off the Project Semicolon website, “A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life.”  http://www.projectsemicolon.org/

My life has been full of times when I've tried to put a period at the end of the sentence. In the picture above, you can see the scar from where I slit my wrist. I was manic at the time, but there are a number of suicide attempts I made when I was manic. It was important to me that I get the semicolon next to my scar. To me, it tells the story of my life; I tried to end it, but my life was not ready for the end. My story was not complete yet. I hope to be able to look at this tattoo when I'm at the low points in my life and be reminded that I've made it through so far, and I can keep going. The low points have been hitting pretty hard lately. I'll need the reminder.

I'd like to get another tattoo. It's one that I've had in mind for awhile.

It's the ribbon for mental health awareness. Mental health issues are really important to me. I want people to be open to speaking about them. I want the shame to stop.