Endless Beginnings

Someone called me "beautiful" a few days ago. Apropos of nothing. And instantly I remembered:

Something horrible happened. 

Moments after, someone answered my unasked question 

("Why?") 

by saying, 

"Maganda ka kasi e." 

It is a horrible thing to remember whenever someone calls me beautiful, but there you have it.

To say that I am uncomfortable about the way I look is a massive understatement. To ward off the discomfort of having to think of myself as a whole, I think of myself as many different parts. I am my lips. I am my birthing scar. I am my two shoulder moles, on opposite sides of my body, as if I had been pierced by a thin arrow in a past life.

I say all these because I got another tattoo. It covers an old one: the horizon where the Little Prince disappeared. It's on my back, at the base of my neck, between my two shoulder blades. It's a rendition of the Wood Between the Worlds (from the Narnia Chronicles, naturally). "The Wood itself is not a 'world' in the sense of Charn, Earth, or Narnia. It is more like a nexus, a dimension that exists outside of all worlds, like a corridor from where anyone can access any of the portals" (from here). Literally, a world of endless of possibilities.

Now, before you think this is a good thing, it actually isn't. I am a socially anxious, obsessive-compulsive, Type A bi-polar. All these possibilities mean too many unknowns, fear, and lack of control. But it is there and it will always be there. And despite my profound fear of it, it still exists to defiantly offer hope.

Last week.

I got the old one on a whim, to commemorate the end of one story. I found myself in my metaphorical horizon and I wanted to pay heed to the loss of the metaphorical little prince.

And then life happened, and I felt like I needed to go back to that old horizon. It was the marker of an end. Now I wanted endless beginnings and possibilities. (Because isn't that what endings are about?)

Since I don't see that part of my body often, I had no real visual attachment to the old tattoo. I was surprised when people kept asking about the old one. I didn't realize that they had grown to identify me with that small tattoo. And to me it was one that I had already forgotten.

Funny how life allowed that happen. (I am grateful.)

Someone asked me if ever there was going to come a time when I would stop getting tattoos. I have no clue, man. Until I run out of stories to live in? So...never?

Or maybe until I feel comfortable with my own body? Until I can look at myself naked and not feel repulsed or sad? Until I have enough tiny little parts of me that they become so many, so indistinguishable, that I start thinking of myself as a whole?

Until my body becomes a testament to my stories and not to what others have done to me.

Today.

Yeah. Maybe then.