I got a tattoo last week. It’s the word “Earthseed” on my upper right arm. The tattoo is referencing work by Octavia E. Butler, a science fiction writer who dreamed up (or remembered?) what would be left after capitalism has devastated the planet. I read her book Parable of The Sower in the midst of the pandemic, in the midst of mass death as a result of the centering of profit over human life.
I’m not scared anymore. Being scared isn’t useful, what is useful is growing intimate with the anxiety and power of change. Knowing how to survive together. Butler writes, “All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change” (Parable of the Sower). Maybe I am scared, but I’m not in denial. Denial, the everyday act of turning away, that is what is most scary. I cannot do it anymore, I won’t. And I can’t be in spaces where there is a refusal to look, a refusal to feel, to care. I have no choice but to exist in those spaces, I know. But it is becoming more painful by the day.
Maybe I got my tattoo to signal to others that I am here and that I am awake. Maybe my tattoo is the same as cutting my hair, as sitting with my legs spread and my shoulders back. An act of turning the inside out. But why? The inside will always stay. Or will it? Maybe I’m afraid when others forget, I will too. How could I forget myself?
My tattoo also serves as a reminder. A reminder that my skin is mine, that it always will be. A reminder of the tender conversation I had with a friend a week before my 20th birthday, as they poked the needle in and out of the soft skin above the inside crease of my elbow. A reminder not to forget myself, to center my body in what I know to be true, the truth that calms my nerves and comforts me when nothing else can.
In the mirror, in the shower, as I lie down to sleep, I am asked a series of questions. How are we going to survive? What does it mean to survive? How do I lean into myself deeply enough to the point where I know falling apart is less scary than staying together?
Unruly Bodies 
“A reminder that my skin is mine, that it always will be”
Aaaahhh I really love this line, it put into words a lot of the feelings I have around getting tattoos as well. It’s always been frustrating to me when people have asked if my tattoos have meaning, because I’ve always known that they did (I wouldn’t have gotten them done if they were meaningless) but I was never sure how to put into words the power that I feel tattoos give me. This phrase is gonna be how I do it from now on. My tattoos are not meaningful because they represent something abstract or personal to me, they are meaningful because they are on my skin and I am meaningful.