My Right Foot

                                                           This Is My Right Foot

 This tattoo is about ten years old, and I got it after a really horrible relationship fail (Break-up).

 At the time I was dating someone who was in a band, we dated for a year, and a couple of months.  He toured quite a lot, he was hardly ever there really but, I thought that this set- up was really romantic. I am a lover of music, I also play music, so I think that it only made sense that I would have admired his talent, will, and determination, those are all admirable traits. It was only after his bands first European tour that he came back, different. He said things to me like, "I didn't see any Hommies." Hommies meaning black people. When he said this, I remember looking at him, kind of squishing my face and saying something like, "Hommies?" "Really?" In all of Europe he didn't see one black person.  I knew it was a lie, and I wondered why he was saying this to me,while realizing this.

We never really talked about race in that way, I never even thought about it, but, apparently he was. He wound up cheating on me, and breaking up with me, and it was later that I found out that he had a problem with I guess being labeled "The Southern Godfather Of Sludge Metal" while, dating me. I was later told be the former drummer that he hated walking into the grocery store with me, because he couldn't stand the stares of people. Maybe people were staring because he was so much taller than me. Why did it have to be because we were different races?

My resolution to the problem was that it was only his perspective that clouded how he thought the world was perceiving him. I never thought of it that way, my experience was completely different. I thought that people looked at us like we were different in an interesting way, not because we were aesthetically opposite.

There is of course more to the story, about"the girl" who he cheated on me with. About that night when I knew that he was going to " do something shady" with "the girl". How "the girl" stalked me. Without going on, he wound up staying with "the girl", they are still together, I think.. Isn't that funny?

Like everyone who experiences heartbreak, or betrayal or both, it feels like open soul wounds, that throb, and burn and sting. It was really after dating him, that I literally stopped dating. I just could never get into it again. It wasn't like unrequited love loss or anything, it was like, I just don't want to do it.





My tattoo artist used metallic ink, and the flower is a make believe one; It is a combination of my favorite flowers a lily and orchid, and a begonia. When I decided to get this tattoo it was because I knew that I faced an ending, and I wanted something externally that showed what was happening inside me. Raw like a wound.  That is what tattoos represent for me, the process of pain, blood, burning, rest, and nurturing, and in the end you actually get something really cool out of it, you get the stain of a memory, the etching. I really wanted to remember, as painful as it was, and every time I look at my foot it reminds me of that period, and how I healed my way out of it.

 Has anyone else been blinded sided with their partners personality dark-side? I swear this is the stuff indie movies are made from. Am I right?