The Story Of My Tattoos

Since people are always asking…

Over the years I’ve seen a fair few written and spoken word pieces about how tattoos are no one else’s business, they are for me and me alone. While that might be true for some, for example, those with deeply personal commemorative tattoos, that doesn’t mean all tattoos are personal and must never be acknowledged.

My tattoos either represent an aspect of my past or identity, a place that I’ve been or even just stuff I fancied the look of. It’s probably also quite telling that the vast majority of my tattoos are on my arms, for me their purpose is to be seen. Each arm has a designated purpose:

My left arm looks like its full of doodles, and that’s exactly what it is. On it, you’ll find various small representations like a band logo (which is a flower), the Deathly Hallows sign, a sketchy deer skull, lyrics to my favourite song in elvish font, a beachy penknife, an anagram of the alphabet, the words “ppl suck” and a big jellyfish from a colouring book.
Some of these symbols have a deeper meaning, such as the deer skull which was hand-drawn by an old friend and the Deathly Hallows sign is an obvious nod to my Harry Potter obsession, but it was also stick-n-poked by one of my ex-girlfriends. Others don’t have a story per se, like the penknife and “ppl suck”, they were both Friday the 13th specials (I’m not sure if that’s a thing everywhere but locally on every Friday the 13th tattoo artists prepare flash sheets of small designs especially for the day). As well as the…