Every Tattoo deserves a tattoo fest!

So I have been contemplating getting a tattoo this entire semester abroad.  By contemplating I mean that I was so 100% positive that I wanted it, but I have really bad follow through.  I knew I wanted it that badly, but I did consider the possibility that I might not get a tattoo because I procrastinate and I push my wants aside and stick solely to the needs.  Part of the procrastination is due to fear: I don't like asking for things and I don't feel comfortable communicating needs all the time.  So instead of putting myself out there, out of fear I hide and stop myself from doing some of the coolest things.

In this way, Ecuador has changed me.  I don't fear considering and following through on my wants.

So, I found the design for this tattoo online.  I just looked up "Quito" in Google images and found this awesome illustration of Quito, surrounded by mountains, booming, busy. Everything I love about Quito.  I fell in love with it and decided if I should ever get a tattoo, it should be of this illustration.  So I showed it to my friend Katie, and she actually volunteered to redraw it and make adjustments to it for me.  One step closer to this fantasy of mine.
One day I told my friend Fernando that I wanted to get a tattoo and he told me all about the artist that does his tattoos and said he was really good.  I kept the idea alive, but didn't really take much action to get it done. Fernando was really the angel in this project.  He told me he would take me to make an appointment and kind of badgered me to get the ball rolling.  He is a true gentleman and a savior.  So the night before we went to the tattoo parlor, Katie finished the design.

So, we went to the parlor and Guillermo, the tattoo artist who has won numerous awards for his designs and tattoos, liked the tattoo a lot and told me to come back two days later to approve his redesign of it and to make an appointment.  He had to redesign it because with the amount of detail, he said he would have to make it two times the desired size to portray it all.  Therefore, I was more than happy for him to do what he needed to do to maintain it's already gargantuan size.  So we went on Saturday to approve the design, but he wasn't finished with it so he told me to come back on Monday afternoon.

Katie, Fernando and I showed up on Monday afternoon to have another 20 min wait while he finished the design and then came back again, only to find that he was free all afternoon and could do my tattoo right there, right then.  Score.  However, we had a few errands to run in order to get it all done.  I had to eat something and I had to get money.  So we had a hot dog party!!!!


Also, we got prizes from ordering combos, so Fernando and I won bracelets (which I deemed friendship bracelets) and Katie won a notebook, which she appropriately used later to draw up her tattoo design on the fly.


So we went back and he prepped a table, I got half naked and it started.  I was under the needle for 2.5 hours hunched over this nazi fold-up highschool concert chair.  Some of it certainly hurt, especially considering that he used the tiny needle to outline the entire tattoo.  But I think I took it well and some of it it actually liked.

Some of this might sound awful and unpleasant.  Quite the contrary.  This was the best experience I could have ever had getting my first tattoo, especially since my tattoo is pretty big.  I actually didn't even realize that it was that big of a deal until my loved ones were shocked at how huge it was!  Memo (Guillermo) was so incredibly nice and funny and gentle.  He definitely took really good care of me and added so many awesome details to the tattoo I was not expecting at all.  He put all of this really good shading in but kept true to my vision and Katie's artwork.  Wonderful.

The Equatorial Bulge is not a forcefield.

I wish I had tougher skin.  Sometimes it feels like I feel stress emitting from the pours of people passing me on the street, infecting my thoughts, my emotions, my functionality.  This indirect stress I sense does not compare in any way to how direct stress affects me. 

Even though we speculated and knew in some sense, we found out for sure that my brother is using again.  I don't use. I'm three-thousand miles away.  Why do I feel this so strongly? This shouldn't affect me, but it does.  I am so emotionally invested in the health of the people that I love that I almost force the pain that they are going through on myself to give them a break, to give them a lesser burden to deal with their problems in the least stressful environment possible.  Of course, I know that this is wrong. I know that this is enabling and cruel to everyone in the mix.  

I would do anything for him.  Or, at least, I would have done anything for him.  I finally shut myself off.  I am now blocking myself from those people in my life who continue to abuse drugs and alcohol and take advantage of me.  I hate myself for it.  I never wanted it to be like this. I want to run away.  Now it feels like three-thousand miles isn't enough.  I wish the Equator was some sort of forcefield that would isolate the chaos of the north and south hemispheres within their respective coordinates.  Quito would be perfect then because I would be just barely on the southern hemisphere, blocked from home, but if I wanted to feel it I could travel 30 min by bus and be on the northern hemisphere.  Unfortunately, that's not how it works. 

I never thought I would have to protect myself from my siblings, the people that I tell myself are my rock, the people I am closest to.  But, apparently, I have a lesson to learn. This would not be happening to him and to me if I we didn't need to learn from it.  I keep telling myself that everything happens for a reason to convince myself that it wasn't malicious.  That there was a reason for his actions.  That there was a reason for his cruelty, for all the hurt he inflicted on me. 

I wish the best for him. I hope that he does well. If he wants to get his shit together and wants to be in contact again, he can.  I will never deny him that. For now I need to learn to protect myself. 

Sometimes I am so grateful for all of the pain and suffering my family has endured due to addiction, because from it so many good things have come.  For example, Liz would have never met Pat and had Maxwell had she not been an addict.  Harry would not being doing really well.  I would not be who I am today had my father not been an addict, had I not been surrounded by addiction.  But going through the pain at the moment is so unbearable.  Why can't everything be what we dreamed?

When we were younger, we moved a lot.  Every time the house we were renting would sell, we would have to scramble to find a new place.  I used to worry a lot about not having a place to sleep and my mom would tell us that we would find a place, and if not, we would live in a cardboard castle.  She always knew exactly what to say.  

I feel like starting a  project.  I might make my own cardboard castle full of gummy worms, soda, kitties, everything I ever wanted when I was young.  I wouldn't mind hiding there for a little while.