People have sometimes asked me if I would ever get a tattoo.  Not the lasting regret of a wild night, drunken mistake, youthful arrogance or bet gone wrong.  But, a reminder of something important, some occasion, a feeling that I wanted commemorate forever.

I’ve never really given it serious consideration.  The need to etch a design on my body has never seemed particularly appealing.

Maybe because I already know how permanent – and painful – it is.

I may not have the actual scars to show it, but my love for him is carved into my very being.

It’s the only thing that I would have tattooed but the reality is that it already is.

Falling in love with him was the same as making the commitment forever.

Giving myself to him with the same permanence of picking a symbol to forever live on my skin, only this was my heart.

That piece of my heart had his name written into it more naturally than a tattoo – it would grow and accommodate as needed, not stretch or skew.

It became a part of me, something shared with only my closest people, like a sign hidden in a most intimate place.

And while it was good, dedicating that space in me to him was wonderful, a real remembrance of my devotion to our love.

But when it started to get bad, it became a mocking memento of my eagerness, my hope, my folly.

Removing him was an option, but one no less painful than the process of burning the mark out of my skin.

I tried, little by little, to lighten his sign on me.  But the seeping, weeping ink of my love for him – my pain for him - was a daily, messy poison that stained my heart.

And what was left when it was all over?  A scar in his place.  One that would never fully heal.  That would never allow anything whole in its place.

So, in the end, what’s the need?  I already have an unchanging reminder of that “forever”, far more damaging than anything done by a stranger.  I held that needle - my own devastating work of art.