Hope yall who celebrate what is admittedly a weird holiday (when boiled down to the fundamentals) had a good one.

We had a good Easter. It was rainy and wet and cold… but the girls and I spent it with family and it was still good.

I have loved these people (and been exasperated by them at times) my whole life. But now, after having each and every one of them step up and care for us so immediately and also keep that effort sustained through the hardest parts of our grief, it is always so incredibly good to see them all. We are very different people, but that is how a greater sense of community and family works- not by being a cookie cutter image of each other, but in seeing the good parts shine out from all these very different people. We are connected at a depth I don’t know I knew about, in the before time.

Anyway, they had a fire, one cousin brought good beer so we didn’t have to drink the other cousin’s bad beer, the kids all got to run around and hassle the cows, we laughed lots, and my aunt and uncle have the FUNNIEST looking dog I’ve ever seen- a Rottweiler/Corgi mix. 10/10, would cold, wet Easter again.

I remember during the day doing the same thing I did at Thanksgiving- looking around and going: hey look at me and cracking jokes and enjoying myself again! What a nice change! I was legitimately happy.

I then did kinda spiral out that evening to a heaviness in the chest and a long dark tea-time of the soul/brain and I don’t know what that’s about sometimes… when that crash happens after a good day. Perhaps its akin to sore muscles after working out? Whatever it was, even though it wasn’t really fun at the time, at least I knew it would pass. It had before. It would again. And it did.

I’ll tell you one thing though. I didn’t feel Lucas’s loss like an open wound anymore in group settings. One that wound has healed, and two: in a very real way I’m never without him.

I will be okay. Make it a new mantra.

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Last week I had a consultation with the tattoo shop that did my snake for some adjustments. Look. I like my snake- but they… did not do it right. There are a variety of styles in tattoos and for this one I wanted a more naturalistic look. What I got was… not. And the shading was not done correctly as to where a light source would be. I am no artist really, but I’m also not NOT an artist at all… so that part bugged me. What bugged me more than THAT is how small the head was. The artist used the right size on the stencil- not sure how it ended up like that, and there were also a few diameter issues to adjust on the body. NOTHING that isn’t fixable, just needed some tweaks so I would be happy with it.

Also- and this annoys me extra extra- that isn’t even the darkest blank ink they could use? I don’t know man… I was honest about it and the shop owner had me come in to meet with a different artist about fixing it- so they were being cool.

Actually, what they WANTED me to do was just show up day of the appointment- but I wanted to talk options ahead of time. So I went in for a standalone consultation and I’m very glad I did. And look, I was no Karen about it, they totally didn’t even have to comp the repair, I understand things happen and was willing to pay for additional work. And if the finished piece looked different from the inspiration piece, but at least looked GOOD, that’s all I cared about.

But unfortunately… this consultation did NOT go well.

The new artist immediately said he thought my snake looked okay (Strike 1), that the thickness issues could be fixed but that the shading was too dark and there was nothing to do. He said he could try, but that it’d all blow out and blend together anyway over time, so it kinda didn’t matter. What he recommended was to do two sessions of laser removal to lighten the darkest parts and start over. This required eight weeks of healing per session and removal hurts, so I’m told, about seven times worse than tattoos and hurts for longer in the healing. So that would put us at September before they would start on re-tattooing. Let it be known this dude had full sleeves of some of the worst and most blown out tattoos I’ve ever seen, so that also got my hackles up.

I let them schedule me for the laser sessions and left. On the drive home I had many thoughts, some of which were self recrimination, but I caught those early and shunted them aside. Thanks for those skills, therapy. This all… this was NOT my fault.

And see the thing is… I got the snake because it is symbolic of transformation and growth. To me it is okay if this is the only tattoo I got that got infected or didn’t end up going correctly and needed additional work- that fit with the theme even, sometimes transformation doesn’t go smoothly! I was even okay if the finished thing ended up looking differently than I had expected. That too seemed very deeply symbolic of what I was going for in the first place. But to laser it off? To erase it and start over? That just seemed wrong. None of my healing over the last two years came through erasure… I just didn’t like it.

Once I got home I went… okay. This is all sitting in my chest wrong so I’m going to listen to that. I cancelled the laser removal appointment and said I wasn’t happy about being told laser was the only way to go with no other options really considered. The owner then called me SIX TIMES in a row. I kept declining and she kept calling right back (super unprofessional and got my back up, honestly). I finally answered and she just word vomited about how the shading was done wrong, is too dark, nothing to be done… etc etc. I held my ground and refused. In the days after that call she continued to text me and I finally just blocked her. I got the very distinct impression she didn’t want pictures of this out there, the piece associated with her shop, or a bad Google review.

I then went- second opinion time. So did research on artists specializing in cover ups and contacted the highest rated one in San Antonio and messaged him on Instagram. He wanted to have a phone consult and so we chatted and he had me send pictures ahead of our call. He assured me… there is much that could be done, the shading isn’t even the worst he’s seen, as a darker black and a lighter grey could both be layered in, and he showed me plenty of work of his that hadn’t blown out years later. (a blow out is a technique issue that causes blurring and ink movement- though lots of artists blame it on being a skin issue. I have other, crisp as hell tattoos… this isn’t a skin issue.) Also that this would be fixing and adding to the design, not destroying it or hiding it behind another tattoo… this too was what I needed to hear. He also had me “tell the story” of the tattoo so he could get a better feel for it- what it meant, why I wanted it… these were all really important things and I so appreciated the depth he took to it. If this goes well I DEFINITELY have a new artist to work with.

So anyway, that call was great but he also wanted to see it in person to check the texture on some of the scar tissue in the areas from being overworked and infected, and he said to give it 3 more weeks to a month and we’d be good to get started on it. And I just go… ah. How perfect of an analogy and it gives me peace with my tattoo that the journey is this:

I will take it, I am grateful, and it feels like some kind of cosmic test a bit too, if I’m honest. And yes… it does already feel like I passed.

I will keep y’all posted and also will post more pictures of the re-work when the time comes.

I leave yall here, as always, with various memes and such from the past few weeks.