127. Tattoo Stories 01

Getting a tattoo 3 months after meeting my bf, serendipity, growth and a podcast my friend and I have launched.

I’m going to tell you a story about a tattoo I got seven years ago.

Yesterday my Mamá (mother in law to you guys, but she’ll kill me for calling her that), C and I went to visit a French town together. She came to visit for the weekend so we had a day out together looking at a castle and a cute mediaeval town. I tend to get car sick so the hour and a half journey home in the dark made the little headache I already had turn into a migraine. When we got home I ran myself a red hot bath with dimmed light, no sounds nor distractions.

I put my head into the hot water and began to feel relief. I tried to slow down mentally seeing as I’d already managed to slow down physically by lying still in the bath. I lifted my arms out of the water and began to look at my tattoos. I’m so used to seeing them I forget that they’re there now. I examined them one by one remembering when and where I’d got each one. I thought back on that younger Emily who’d chosen the design and placement. I laughed at my nineteen, twenty, twenty one and twenty two year old self and felt compassion for her, how cute.

I stopped at one and really did think “girl you were crazy”.

I turned nineteen in October 2016 and met C in November that same year. I can’t find a photo to know the exact date, but by February I had already gotten a tattoo inspired by him. That’s three months into knowing him, which was a bit crazy, not going to lie.

It all started when he said that meeting me was a serendipity.

I’d never heard that word before and I’d definitely never been referred to as such a thing. At that moment, I told myself that I was getting the word tattooed because I believed that life was full of serendipities (which it is) but only I know the real truth, and you’re about to find out too: I never wanted to forget what C had said to me.

We’d been getting to know each other for three months and we were students at university, him from the north of Spain and me living in the south, there was a great chance we’d never see each other again, graduate and go our separate ways, lose interest in each other before we’d finished our degrees… We were nineteen and neither of us expected to get where we are today which is why I wanted to get that moment permanently tattooed on my arm. Even when it was all over, I wanted a reminder of what I had once been for someone.

I could be a serendipity for someone and that was the first time I’d ever been told such a thing, I wanted to force myself to believe that what I was experiencing was real. Someone was choosing to love me, telling me that I’d brought light into their life, that I was a surprise that had appeared when they weren’t looking for it. I needed to believe that I could be that and that it could happen again if C and I had gone our separate ways.

Yesterday, while looking at the tattoo on my arm I felt tenderness. When I had needed to get this tattoo I was so small and had zero to little self confidence and self love. I tried to permanently record a belief onto my skin in the hopes of making it sink into my mind, going from ink to reality.

I’ve grown a lot since then and I no longer need to force myself to believe any of those things because I don’t question them anymore. I know I am worthy, I am strong, I am important, I am loved, I am special, I am fun, I am kind and above all, I will always believe those things even if nobody else does.

While I was walking around the medieaval French town with Mamá and C, I got a notification from

carlota 🦎

who’d shared a carta through her newsletter

entreoctubres

titled “FRAGMENTOS” and I was instantly excited because FRAGMENTOS is a podcast we’ve just launched together.

I was standing in the middle of a second-hand shop when I began to read it and had to stop because I was starting to cry and I didn’t really fancy crying in the middle of the aisle. I felt so many emotions flow through me while reading her piece and I again felt the feeling of being someone’s serendipity.

“It was the universe’s magic that brought me my artistic guardian angel”

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to find my way back to myself after being very lost throughout my teenage years. Meeting C was the turning point in my life and it’s been a non stop journey since then. As I’ve matured I’ve felt prouder in being a woman, I’ve reshaped what that means for me and with each year that’s passed I’ve become more and more the person I want to be. With this new found strength I also had to let old friendships go and trust that new people would cross my path, which they have. They are my serendipities as much as I am theirs, and when that happens all I can do is thank the Universe and remember what it was like to feel like a loser wandering around feeling invisible.

If I were able to travel back in time, I wouldn’t try to convince that younger Emily to not get the tattoo or warn her that she’d hate the font she chose in that moment, I wouldn’t warn her that it would become a mega popular tattoo choice either; I’d let her be just as she needed to be and I’d let her find her own path. She was trusting that she would again be someone’s serendipity and she was right.

Carlota appeared in my life thanks to us both writing our newsletters on Substack and now she’s the person I speak to the most. We message every single day through our normal WhatsApp chat, our FRAGMENTOS group chat and Instagram messages. We have three different conversations through each medium and I feel like she’s been my close friend forever. I wasn’t looking for her but she appeared. I didn’t have any plans on starting a podcast right now but it happened. I didn’t know I needed her until she was already deeply rooted in my heart.

We easily forget how important we can be for other people and Carlota makes me feel important. She has thanked me endless times for asking her to start this project together and now I want to thank her.

Carlota, gracias por verme como yo te veía a ti. Gracias por invitarme a entrar en tu habitación compartida y llenarme de besos y abrazos tuyos y de tus amigos. Gracias por lanzarte al mar conmigo cuando te propuse crear este proyecto juntas. Gracias por elegirme. Gracias por quedarte. Gracias por reírte tanto cuando las cosas no eran tan graciosas y enseñarme que se puede estar doliendo, y aún así lanzar amor a mansalva. Gracias por abrirte conmigo y permitirme acompañarte. Gracias por traer orden a mi caos mental. Gracias por motivarme y decirme que sí lo podía hacer. Gracias por darme mi espacio y mi tiempo cuando yo no encontraba los claros que tú sí. Gracias por hacerme saber que me querías sin decírmelo. Gracias por darme la mano debajo de la mesa cuando estaba temblando de miedo. Y gracias por reírte siempre, siempre, siempre.

When I got my serendipity tattoo I took every detail into account and in that moment it was what I wanted and needed even though nowadays I am different. There will be a moment when we’ll both look back on this podcast project and see all the flaws and things we didn’t know at the beginning and we’ll also feel tenderness for our beginner selves. But the beginners that are aware of their limited knowledge and capacity that still put themselves out there and follow their dreams are the people that grow and create special things to put out into the world.

Sigue confiando amiga que yo confío.

If you want to listen to our podcast FRAGMENTOS in Spanish, you can do so here:

Each month we choose an essay and then select a fragment of it to reflect on and go into the social and historical context, talk about other authors of that time and share our own opinions and bring it back to the present moment.

It’s not recorded with the best microphones nor edited with the best technique or software, but it’s made with a lot of love and excitement which is the fuel that keeps us going.