I have 2+2=4 tattooed on the back of my leg and getting it wasn't a spur of the moment decision. It wasn't a drunken mistake, a dare, or a lost bet. I thought about it for nearly a year. I researched fonts and tattoo parlors for months. I considered placement nearly every day, finally deciding to get it on the back of my leg, positioned right between where my high top Converse start and where the cuff of my jeans end so it can be seen even when I'm wearing high shoes and/or long pants.
I thought about the meaning every day of that year, too. Winston, the main character of George Orwell's "1984", claimed that the totalitarian government he lived under could say that 2+2=5 one day and that would suddenly become the truth. Winston held onto the fact that 2+2=4 as a way of holding onto his humanity, even refusing to say that the simple equation equals 5 in order to end his torture for the crime of thinking for himself. According to Orwell and Winston, "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
That message stuck with me, and there was nothing I wanted permanently on my body more than that simple equation that I knew how to solve as soon as I learned what counting was. However, when other people see my tattoo, they only see the math. They don't see what I see, so most people's natural response is the same: telling me I'm going to regret it when I'm older.
I can see their point. It is a seemingly stupid tattoo, and as I grow older, the meaning of it may not be as important to me as it is right now. One day, I'll stop wearing my high top Converse and my cuffed jeans, so the placement I so carefully planned will become irrelevant. One day, "1984" may no longer be my favorite book, and its messages about truth, humanity, and individuality may no longer matter to me.
However, even if all of this happens, I still won't regret my tattoo because it is a reflection of who I was at the moment in time when I got it. When I look at it, my first thought is no longer Orwell and humanity. I look at it and I remember me. I had left everything and everyone I'd ever known to move to a new state for college just two months before. I had come out of the closet to my family just one day before. I was just weeks away from cutting off most of my hair. It was the one year anniversary of the day I'd gotten into a toxic relationship that broke me down a little more every day. On the day I got my tattoo, I felt brave, strong and powerful for possibly the first time in my life, and when I look at the little 2+2=4 on the back of my leg, that's what I think of. I see the most empowered version of myself when I see it, and I will never regret who I was in that moment.
So yes, I have a seemingly dumb tattoo, but it means everything to me. Please don't tell me I'm going to regret it because I promise you I never will.
