2.4.10

this is actually a completely unrelated tattoo.

i hope you have never lost someone you love. if you have, believe me when i say i'm sorry, and believe me when i say i understand.....

that is a thing you either understand.....or you will.

a very wise and beautiful woman once told me that when the teacher dies you have to internalize the teacher, and become the teacher. that is how people keep living. they live through you in their strongest, best ways.

she was speaking to me about the death of someone who was very much a mentor/sister/teacher in my life but i think that anyone you lose can be a teacher. every single life and story has something that you can internalize and take with you through your life.

the thing about doing that... about internalizing someone, especially someone close to you... is that you can't ignore the pain that you have to go through in remembering and honoring them. you have to really experience the longing and the frustration of mourning. if you ignore it, if you refuse to look at it, the good and the bad, then you aren't going to digest it and synthesize it and live with it. it will be some hard, half-formed thing. some obsidian bit riding around in your heart.

the key i think is to let everything be ok. you have to just let it be ok. if you are mad, if you are distraught, or hysterical, or disgusted; whatever you feel when these memories shimmer to the surface, or slam into you during the most inopportune moments (say at home depot), you just have to allow yourself to be that way. it's ok. just let it be horribly uncomfortable and accept that there is nothing you can do about it.

you just have to go right through it, and let it go right through you. you cannot go around, or under, or away. it has to radiate right fucking through you. it has to get in your cells.

and then the best parts of them are tattooed into you. it hurts. but it's permanent.