My Tattoo Story, Part 2

I decided to get the tattoo right before the Muslim Qurban Heyt (holiday of sacrifice), which is 60 days after the end of Ramadan. Muslim holidays are official holidays in Xinjiang, so a lot of my friends go home and official government offices close. Then I could spend a lot of time at home letting it heal and the gym would be closed for training anyway.

I went the week before Qurban Heyt to check out the place first and make sure it was clean, comfortable, and professional. I wanted to make sure I felt comfortable there, that the artist was friendly and open to my ideas, and to make sure they used one-time needles and ink.

The place was far away, in the north (read: Chinese) part of the city. I took two busses to get there, studying Uyghur during the 1.5 hour trip. I found my way there, going through security checks to get to her office on the 17^th floor of an office building. I walked in and she immediately knew who I was, since how often does a white blonde girl come into a Chinese tattoo studio? It turned out that I was her first foreign client.

She was sitting on the couches in the front lobby, and stood up and greeted me with a smile when I walked in, complimenting me on my Chinese. She was very petite, her arms and legs like sticks poking out from under her baggy black t-shirt and long cargo shorts. She was shorter than me, probably around 5’4” with long, straight, black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail in the middle of her head. I noticed she had a couple colorful tattoos on her shins and calves. 

A girl with a mini skirt and both legs almost completely covered in tattoos lounged on the couch inside the tattoo studio with her legs propped up on the legs of the couch, playing on her phone. A guy with tattoos covering his entire neck was working on a shin tattoo of another guy watching videos on his phone with his teeth clenched and a grimace on his face. He got a call. “I’m getting a tattoo right now, what are you up to?” he answered into it. I chuckled to myself. How often do you get to say that?

LH and I talked easily. She understood my accent and I felt at ease communicating with her. We discussed how big I wanted it and where I wanted it. 

I told her I wanted to get it in the middle of my back, and she told me, “I think you should get it somewhere you can see it. If you get it on your back, your entire life you won’t see it with your own eyes. You’ll see it in pictures and you’ll see it in the mirror, but you won’t see it yourself. I think you should get it somewhere you can see it yourself, then it can serve as a reminder and memorabilia for you.”

She was right. I agreed and told her I would think about it, and would probably get it on the inside of the bicep, or on my ribs. I would think about it and let her know by the time I came back to get the tattoo. 

She told me she would outline the calligraphy in a pen, and then paste that to the place I wanted to tattoo like a temporary tattoo. That way, even though she doesn’t speak a word of Uyghur, she would be able to re-construct the tattoo 100% directly as it had been designed.

I asked her about using one-time use needles and ink, and she put me at ease. 

All check boxes were clear, and I was ready to go on Saturday, September 10th, coincidentally the 3^rd month anniversary of my grandfather’s death.

PAIN

There was something else about getting the tattoo that was key for me. I wanted to feel the pain.

I could have printed out the logo and taped it to the wall above my bed. I could have made it the background of my phone. I could have put it on Facebook and made it my profile picture. But it wasn’t just about a logo or a saying for me. It was about a scar. I had a scar and I wanted to feel the physical pain of that scar. I knew that scar would stay with me for the rest of my life, and I wanted a physical manifestation of that scar.

I wanted to feel the pain for my grandpa. I knew he bore a lot of pain with his mental illnesses—not just Alzhiemer’s but depression too. It wasn’t just for my grandpa though. I wanted to feel the pain of all humanity, as pain is part of the human condition. I wanted to feel the pain, acknowledge the pain, and accept the pain, and in that way link to all other humans feeling that pain—the pain of being a burden—and know their pain and see their pain. I wanted to accept the pain as a way of saying, Pain, I embrace you as a part of the human condition. It was also an opportunity in practicing the philosophy of "This Too Shall Pass." It would hurt, but only temporarily. 

There was a note I had written to myself on my phone a few months earlier, during my transition in April from taking comps to moving from the US to China. Meditation had saved me during that time, and I had been reading a lot of Pema Chodrun. I wrote a note to myself with quotes from her book, “The Places that Scare You.”

It was a note I had looked at several times in the last few months. From leaving the US, from taking comps, from moving back to China, from practicing two challenging foreign languages in a place far from home with few friends, these were my words of comfort:

“Let's move toward difficulties rather than backing away. 

Let’s use poison as medicine, as fuel for waking up, as seeds of compassion, to breathe it in for everybody, as part of the human condition, to use difficult situations to awaken our genuine caring for other people who, just like us, often find themselves in pain. 

To what do we really commit ourselves? Is it to playing it safe and manipulating our life so that it will give us security and confirmation? Or do we take refuge in warriorship, in taking a leap, in going beyond our usual safety zones?”

This is what I told myself as I struggled through comps, struggled through Uyghur during my first four months of being back in Xinjiang, and this is what I told myself when my Grandpa died. Life is not about avoiding suffering. The death of a loved one tells us that. How lucky we are to have known someone to have meant so much to us.

Living in Urumqi, Xinjiang is by far the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. That tattoo is a reminder of that, of the struggles I faced, and how those were valuable lessons—not burdens, but gifts in opening my eyes to the pain of inequality, the discrimination of race and gender, and the loneliness of the human condition.  

And that is what I would tell myself when I got my tattoo and that is what my tattoo symbolized to me in that moment.