Enlightenment Ain't For Sissies: My Left Wrist

When I was fourteen I was in a very bad place. I've been back and forth from that place more times than I'd like to share. But fourteen and twenty-seven were the only times I've gotten too close and what I can only assume was divine intervention saved me.

New Years Day 2001 left no visible scars. But that afternoon in 1988 left one. A very tiny one, but a scar nonetheless. No one really ever noticed it. But I did. Every day for the rest of my life the scene replayed itself every time I looked at my left wrist. My left wrist proclaimed to me that I was unlovable. It told me I was worthless. It told me I should never have been born. It told me I was too stupid to live. It was a very mean wrist.

So today I drove eighty miles across the beautiful state of Virginia, to the tiny town of Strasburg. It was idyllic, to say the least. Old and beautiful, like stepping back in time. There was even a parade going down Main Street upon my arrival, led by John Deere tractors pulling the waving Miss Shenandoah Valley. I cut through the parade, because well, it was a parade and I didn't have all night. I crossed the street to a tattoo studio I had heard about from a friend of mine.

And there, I told my left wrist to shut the fuck up.