2004-09-17 - 2:01 a.m.
When I was 13 I was a rebel. I was hardcore. So I did what hardcore girls do.. I got a tattoo. My sister's friend Shannon offered to do it when she noticed me admiring hers. So I walked home with her after school one day. Her father snored drunkenly in his easy chair when we snuck into her house. He was a cop by night but that didn't stop him from drinking a pint or so of Jack during the day... (He was the definition of every bad Irish stereotype.) We crept quietly into her bedroom where I removed my shirt as she sat heating a needle with a lighter with her ink-stained artists hands. She shoved her hair out of her face as she took out a bottle of ink that she stole from the art room at the local high school where she was a student..
My mom thought I was at "Extra Credit" night at school. I went often though I never needed it. I was a straight A student in my AP classes. I mostly just sat in the library reading while the students did their best impersonations of spectators at sporting events, all hands in the air. As I'm reading this I'm laughing.. I guess looking back I'm realizing that a real rebel doesn't get straight A's and isn't usually in advanced placement classes.. lol..
I realize a lot of things about myself while I'm writing.. I guess I was a rebel but I was rebelling more against my sense of self and what I was than what my parents or society expected from me.
Which leads me to the thought that I had which caused me to begin writing this page to begin with.
What do you do when you've already done everything you can to prove yourself as an individual? When I wanted to set myself apart in the past, I did crazy things; tattos, got my belly button pierced when everyone else was exploring getting a second hole in their ears.. now I have four in each ear, including my cartilage, I have 5 tattos, got fake nails, dyed my hair, permed it, cut it, highlighted it....got rid of the nails and went back to my natural hair color.. I don't know what to do anymore...
As Dylan Thomas wrote:
I guess I'm a grown-up now."Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
