The Cerebral Mum

Motherbumper wanted to hear more stories about people’s body art. So this is mine.

Unlike Girl’s Gone Child, I do not “remember what I was wearing, feeling, and why I walked through the door,” but I do remember where I was in my life. These are the memories which return to me as I contemplate my tattoo:

I remember the beautiful arrogance of my youth, the arrogance of a girl who had left home at a time of her own choosing.

And I remember that boy, not yet a man, with the chocolate curls and the gloriously old fashioned name who often climbed in through my bedroom window to read Keats and listen to me speak although I would never let him touch me.

I remember throwing teacups and crying huddled in my closet.

I remember that party when the bed was moved into the back yard with the living room rug thrown over it, when the living room was cleared for dancing and we made a foam-room by lining the bathroom walls with black garbage bags and filling the tub up to the jets with litres of bubble bath.

I remember a girl named Lisa saying, “Thank-you,” after my friend and I had told the stories of our childhoods, the stories no child should ever have to tell.

I remember the first song lyrics I ever wrote.

when the shadow falls away i try to face all the pain
when the child comes out to play i try to turn her away
because the lover starts in again
i open my limbs to him
he opens the wound

insane

I remember reading everything I ever wrote to anyone who would listen.

I remember that power I had which I did not yet fully understand, which I used brutally against that boy with the chocolate curls after a night sitting on the floor in a corner of the uni bar talking to a girl who had far worse stories to tell than mine and a tattoo of the same comic book character. I remember pushing him hard up against a brick wall after we had left, crushing him with my body and kissing him deeply before turning and walking away.

Just because I could.

I remember my righteous anger.

I remember feeling fully justified and sure about everything I did.

I remember peeling back all my flesh, word by word, and exposing myself literally and figuratively to a world which could never contain me.