A while back, we requested pictures of your tattoos and the stories that go with them. Tattoos have a long history, and can have a wealth of emotion and memories behind them. Today, we share Katherine’s ink story. If you have one you’d like to share, hit us up!
“This tattoo (or rather these tattoos, because I have a matching one on my other wrist) has two stories behind it.
Wing: When I was 17, I was in a pretty serious car accident. Fortunately I walked away with nothing but whiplash and a fractured shoulder blade, but if I had been going the slightest bit faster or the other driver the slightest bit slower, I would’ve been totalled along with my car. It was like I had a guardian angel. Shortly after I got out of the hospital, my grandma gave me the necklace with the first wing, which she had incidentally gotten from a fundraiser for that very hospital a few months before. She tracked down the other wing a year later, on the anniversary of the accident.
Ring: I purchased the ring during a pretty severe depressive episode a few years later. The knot allegedly means “strength,” and that spoke to me. I keep it as a reminder that I’m stronger than my depression.”
It feels like everyone around me is sinking further and further down this whirlpool of insanity. Meanwhile, I’m floating on some shitty piece of driftwood yards away. I’m holding on for dear life, eyes closed, hoping i don’t get sucked back in to that hole. I’m sick of that feeling. it’s almost worse than drowning in the whirlpool itself.
t’s hard to come to grips with the fact that no matter how well I’m doing, I’m probably gonna end up feeling like complete shit again, because that’s just the way my brain cookie crumbles.
We at The Band Back Together Project know how stressful life – especially during these dark months – can be. So we’re going to brighten up your week with one of our Friends of The Band Facebook Group Thing because who doesn’t love an adorable animal picture?
If you’d like to submit an awesome picture of your animal, you may do so by creating an account and adding media to a post about your animal, or by emailing becky@bandbacktogether.com or stacey@bandbacktogether.com!
From our wonderful friend TL:
This is our earless wonder Clementine.
She came to us as a foster and I just couldn’t let her go.
All our animals are foster fails, she’s just the most recent. Lol. Getting bigger every day at 7 months but she’s full of that kitten energy! When I go to the bed, so does she.
She helps socialize our other fosters and brings unending joy!!!
In my sixteen years, I’ve never had to deal with the problem of bullying from others. However, for as long as I can remember, I have been a big bully to myself.
“Why are you alone on a Friday night? On a Saturday night? On any night? Because NO ONE wants to hang out with you! No one likes you!”
“You aren’t really asexual! You’re just deluding yourself!”
“You think you’re life’s bad? You don’t even have a reason for being depressed!”
“Why the fuck are you getting a second helping? You don’t do anything to burn it!”
“The reason you’re doing badly in school isn’t because you don’t function well in school, it’s because you’re dumb as a post! You don’t deserve to be in your classes, you’re not that smart!”
“You’ll never make it as a writer!”
“Of course your sisters don’t want to talk to you. They have better friends than you in college!”
I try not to listen to these things I say to myself and keep them shut out. But I can count on one hand the people who really know me and who care about me. I’m so alone.
I won’t crack. Won’t let me get to me. I’ll keep smiling for my family and keep telling my friends that I’m ‘just tired.’ I’ll just keep it all inside, keep it all behind my wall.
It’s been a long time since I thought about those first few days with my daughter. Actually, that’s a lie. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the encephalocele, that pesky bit of brain matter growing out of the back of her head. The still-growing scar on her misshapen skull makes damn sure of that.
It’s always peeking out, just below her curls.
I wonder what she’ll think of that, someday, when she realizes that she’s not quite like the other kids. I know there will come a day when she hates it, another when she accepts it, and another when she realizes just how grave a situation it was… and what a miracle it is that she is still around today.
I know enough, thanks to my nursing background, to know what an absolute miracle it is that she’s walking around, talking, and demanding that I paint her bedroom pink. Not a day goes by that I don’t thank her for showing me the way, for helping me find my light, and for using that light to help others.
She’s the reason we, this Motley Band, are here. She’s the sole reason that this site, which has helped so many, exists. Without her, I’d just be some blogger with a blog that I use to pontificate about the underrepresentation of kumquats in today’s media. I’d still be Your Aunt Becky, but I wouldn’t have done this. Any of this.
In her short life, she has altered the path of so many. In her three small years, she has done so much more than I ever will.
While I could sit here, raging against her birth defect – which has given me a wicked case of PTSD – I don’t. I celebrate it. I celebrate that one tiny bit of brain that has changed the course of my life forever.
Today, I ask you to share your stories of birth defects, birth trauma and birth injury. There are so many of us out there in the shadows, waiting to share how their lives have been changed with a few small words, a diagnosis.
The greatest stories remain untold, of course, not from a desire to tell them, but from a lack of an understanding ear.
In here, in this cozy library, fire crackling in the background, as we sit on overstuffed leather chairs, we are ready to lend you our ears.
