Selective pain

I started my back piece over a year ago, a mosaic of mandalas, necker cubes, and pseudo-sacred geometry in black and grey. Since then, I’ve gone to my artist every month to get stabbed for 3.5-4.5 hours at a time - around 50 hours under the needle so far. I’ve got another 10 hours or so to go.

I’m ready for it to be over, I think.

This isn’t my first tattoo. I have five others, all decent size. None of them have affected me like this one though. I’m not proud of any of them like I am of this one.

Everything before this was done in one or two sessions. They didn’t cost anything other than money. This one has at times drained me and filled me up.

The needle stings until about the 30 minute mark. At that point the body is flooded with adrenaline and endorphins. Some of the edge goes away. You settle in to the rhythm of the process. There have been sessions where I’ve almost dozed off.

When the endorphins start to wear off, the pain comes back hard. My wall is usually at about 4 hours. It takes a lot of focused breathing to get much past that.

There have been a few sessions where the drugs my body makes weren’t powerful enough to help much at all. Over the ribs, the kidneys. My lower back in general is surprisingly sensitive. At times the needle felt more like a scalpel. Those sessions were hours of misery.

But it was worth it. It’s one thing to endure pain you can’t walk away from. Kidney stones, broken bones, trauma. Those teach survival. You gain something else from selective pain: discipline, a more concrete sense of where your limits are when you could walk away, how much control you have - your agency.

I don’t enjoy pain, but I feel like I learn a lot about myself from it, and I recognize the weird privilege I have to be able to opt in. I’ve learned that I am way tougher than I give myself credit for and can push myself deep into discomfort and choose to sit with it peacefully for a long time.

This is also the first tattoo I’ve got since learning that I am autistic and finally understanding how deep touch affects me, how grounding it is, even though light touch can drive me bonkers. I’ve become more comfortable with how I’m wired going through the process, more forgiving of how I’m affected by the world I live in. I give myself more grace. It sounds so stupid to my ear, but it’s real that someone can hurt you and heal you at the same time.

I don’t know that we’re friends, but the artist and I have a relationship at this point. It’s hard not to when you spend that much time with someone else. It’s strangely intimate. We share the same birthday, a year apart. We know each other’s kids’ names, ages, personalities. She’s tattooed my wife.

It’s always funny when people ask me what one of my tattoos means. For me, they don’t mean anything. They’re just the physical mark that’s left at the end of the process. Something to help you remember being tattooed.

I said I thought I was ready for this to be over and that’s true. I think I’ve learned about all I’m going to learn from this piece.

Which means I’m already planning another.