Still I rise

I never thought I’d want a tattoo.  While I was always able to think of multiple images that could represent what is deeply meaningful to me, the truth is that I have so many passions (music, hiking, canoeing, birds, poetry, science, social justice…) that I couldn’t fathom how I would choose just one or a few of those things to mark myself with permanently.  I have never been able to settle on one thing – one hobby, one skill, one career, one way of being.  The path in life that I have followed is far from linear; often not even coherent.

So what is it that remains the same?  Change.

Though I resist it, I simultaneously embrace it.  How can I not want to know what’s just around the next river bend, or just beyond that dark, frightening forest?  How can I remain still, as afraid as I often am, when there is the unknown, just beyond my reach?

The phoenix is an ancient, mythical bird from Greek folklore.  It is said that a phoenix constantly cycles through a death and rebirth.  It dies, in fire and ashes and smoke, and then is born again from these flames, simultaneously brand new and yet still the same. 

The symbolism of this is one that I resonate with.  My life has been a series of constant deaths and rebirths.  I rarely speak about my prior “lives” to most people, as they seem so far away as to belong to someone else entirely.  Yet I simultaneously recognize how deeply these past periods of pain have formed and shaped me.  From chronic physical & emotional abuse, to briefly being without a home, to a relationship that tore me apart; from being given label after label, diagnosed but never ‘cured’, dark months of severe depression and thoughts of ending my own life; figuring out I was queer only in my 30's and the associated familiar rejections, the painful loss of loved ones; the soul-tearing journey that is seeking fertility treatments; the loss of my sweet little raspberry-sized baby…

These selves, these lives, these versions of me – some are so far in the past that I am only vaguely aware of how they shaped me; others are immediately present, the wounds in my heart still open and baking in the sun.

So who am I but this – this constant cycle of death of the Self, the Ego, and the inevitable Re-births?  I have learned that pain and suffering is not something to be feared.  Pain in this life is a given; that much I have learned through my various iterations, if nothing else.  Even that emotional, soul-crushing pain where it felt like I would never breathe again, never live again, never be myself again… it is not ‘bad’.  It just is.  It is a part of me, no better or worse than the other parts of me.

Most days I feel perpetually 17, as if the years had not since doubled.  I am still that wild, awkward, un-tamable creature with the intensity of love and despair over life that for some peaks at 17 and for me seems to have remained constant.  If I could go back in time and tell her just one thing, it would be this:

Life is so much more intensely beautiful than you could possibly imagine; and also more intensely full of pain than you could ever fathom living through.  Yet you will.  You will die inside and you will be born again.  You will think that you cannot possibly ever be the same person, and nevertheless be reborn into the exact same core of who you are… just more so, each time.  Do not get stuck, do not cling to one single idea of who you are or what your life should be – the most unexpectedly painful and beautiful things await you.  Yet you will still be you, perpetually 17.

Once I realized how much I resonated with the mythology of the phoenix, it became quite clear to me that this was quite possibly the only thing I could ever permanently mark my body with, because it is the only part of me that will always, always remain.  The cycle of destruction and resurrection. 

The experience of sitting down and actually getting it was almost spiritual.  I knew, going in, that my extreme sensitivity would likely cause the experience of pain to be more intense than is typical for this part of my arm, and I was indeed correct.  The process of slowly tracing the outline of the phoenix felt like knives slicing my skin.  I clung to my worry stone (given to me by someone who has also experienced intense suffering and rebirth), and breathed into the pain, rather than trying to escape it. 

There is no real growth, real beauty, without being forged in fire.  The pain became an offering, a gift to myself; just another micro-death and re-birth.  The energy coursing through my arm after each small application of ink was almost pleasurable; the intense cocktail of chemicals inside me doing their job to process the pain.  I had tears in my eyes for a good while, though they didn’t fall.  They weren’t induced by the physical pain; rather they were a release of emotion, at this promise that I was making to myself.

Why place something permanent on my body, where I will see it every day?  As a commitment.  A necklace or purple hair or a change of clothing is temporary and can be taken on and off or hidden.  This tattoo, for me, and the process of getting it (it took a year of thinking about it before I finally went and did it) is a commitment to the Self and this process of giving myself up to Life.

I do not know what is to come; I do not know how much it will hurt nor how beautiful it could possibly be.  But I am done hiding, I am done making excuses and I am done letting the small self win.  17 years of self-growth, therapy, journaling, meditation, exploration, various spiritual practices, have led me here.  This was not an easy decision nor one made lightly.

The phoenix tattoo is a commitment to that; a commitment to embrace my shadow self, the ashes of the previous incarnations of who I have been.  You can see the specks of these ashes falling from the black shadow phoenix on my arm, representing how impermanent it is.  The firey, re-born phoenix rises behind the shadow self, and flecks of fire come out the top, also representing the impermanence of every re-birth and new self that we become.  We are in constant motion and change. 

I didn’t want just a single phoenix; I needed both, the old and the new; the dark and the light; death and rebirth.  Pain and suffering makes up just as much of me as love and light does.  None of it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’.  It all just Is.  Just as I simply Am, and do not need to chase one identity or the other, or conform to any single shape.

I am everything; a river in constant motion; a phoenix rising from the ashes.