"If you don't like it you can always just get it lasered off!" is never something you could catch me saying. A tattoo is something you get (with a sober mind or not) because at that moment you wanted to remember something for the rest of your life. Whether it was a person, place, or even just a quote it may have meant a lot to you, no matter how silly it may seem.
I'm an advocate for expressing yourself, no matter what kind of person you are. So I'm not going to judge a person based on one tattoo. Everyone has a reason-or not (who cares, you're not them?!) for getting the ink they do. Your body is a canvas. The clothes you wear, the hairstyle you have each day, the jewelry you have on, and the art on your skin says a lot about you. You do not need to explain a tattoo to anyone. It can mean everything in the world to you or it could mean nothing at all! That's the beauty of it all-it doesn't matter!
I don't think you should ever get your current tattoo covered up or go into a tattoo shop grasping onto the notion that you will always have the option to do so. Yes, I've seen some beautiful cover-up jobs and believe me: I'd love to cover up some mistakes I've made but that will always be a part of my past whether I like it or not. And I'm proud of that!
Have a funny anecdote you share with a close friend? Get those matching tattoos! Even if you may not be friends forever, that's a story you can look back on forever because it's embedded into your skin. The ink in your skin is a story, a scrapbook, a mural of all the things that went wrong (or right!) in your life.
Photo Credit: Cameron D'Aquila, Artist: Rich Sensale of Space Ace Tattoo in Bellmore, NY
No matter the location of the tattoo it's some story you can share (or twist to make it sound more exciting) because your kids will love to hear about one day. In this day and age, film cameras have become almost obsolete and we have switched to using digital photos on Instagram with an emoji and a set of lyrics that don't have much to do with the photograph (or filter) itself. What comes after the photo sharing apps? Physical photographs fade and paintings crumble over time. How else can we tell our story or look down at that one particular work of art on your body and remind ourselves of the good and bad times that are in the past and the better and possibly worse time to come in the future?
No matter how hard you try to get that ex's name lasered or covered up with something else, you will always know it was there and that person made an enormous impact on your life.
