Today I finally did it. I got my butterfly tattoo. It is very small, pretty and delicate...probably even Mum would approve.
I started getting piercings done in my ears just to piss Mum off. She had given me permission to have the first one when I was 13, but thereafter I just started adding holes just to push up hard against my boundaries. In my 20s I got my navel pierced, and then I got a tattoo on my shoulder. "That's quite nice" Mum said. That took the wind out of my sails. The shock value was gone.
That first tattoo was acquired so long ago I can hardly remember when it was. But I do remember that it didn't hurt as much as getting my navel pierced. So today when I went to visit the tattoo parlour with my design in mind, I was feeling confident that it would be super easy. I've birthed four children - pain....I laugh in the face of pain.
I wasn't laughing. It HURT. A lot. I found it was easier to look at the tattooist while she worked rather than look away. It made the pain bearable.
But there is something to be said for the whole process of getting a symbol irreversably marked on your skin. I chose a monarch butterfly - its a memory, but its also hope. Mum loved raising monarch butterflies in our family home after we had left home. It became a hobby. Mum would take caterpillars inside the house to protect them from wasps, and chrysalises to protect them from the cold. She was a supporter of the Monarch Butterfly Trust and in the last summer in the old house, she was participating in a butterfly tagging project.
Its a symbol of something lost, but its a symbol of looking forward, too. Remember The Butterfly of Happiness? This butterfly will be a constant reminder to be on the lookout for it, and to not chase it, and just wait, patiently, for it to alight upon me.
The pain was like a symbolic tug - something that could bring that emotional pain to the surface to manifest itself in something physical that would have a positive outcome.
Bringing emotional pain to the surface is a constant challenge. A few weeks ago I embarked on a relaxing weekend away from the family in which to simply DO nothing, and have time for some solitude that I had been sorely missing for ten years. I'm not sure that I did much 'reflecting' but it was for the most part, relaxing and enjoyable.
Late on Sunday morning I had brunch with my brother and his wife at Mission Bay, then decided I would just take a drive and see where the day took me. I wound my way along the coast, through parts of Auckland I had never been before. My route ended up with me heading towards Pakuranga - my old stomping ground - and I was irresistably drawn to carrying on driving there, and onwards to my old home. Visiting Pakuranga has become very strange, now. I have no family or close friends there, so I do not go there often. Around every corner is a ghost of the former me, my former life. Nothing remarkable had happened to the old house, except for a maple tree that had been cut down. And then it happened. The floodgates opened, and I started to cry. Not to look like a loiterer, I drove away, and parked at a nearby council playing field, and wept and wept. I didn't just weep - I howled. I screamed. There was nobody to hear me, and this needed to get out!
The loss of a tree on a piece of land that I no longer had any claim to knocked me for six. This is a tree that appears as a little sapling in our old family photos of the house when we first moved in. Before Mum moved, it was big enough for my two boys to climb. And now its gone.
Finally, the tears that I needed to cry in November 2010 were here. They were brutal and uncompromising, and I didn't resist them.
Perhaps I am learning to deal with pain. I can allow it to happen to me - welcome it, in fact - understanding that the outcome is worth it. I can also allow it to rise from the inside, and be released. And feel relief. Finally.
