176. Will I be erasing all of my tattoos?
I have a fully developed prefrontal cortex now.
C and I have showered together since day one however, hair washing day is a bit more uncomfortable now because of the slanted ceiling in our current bathroom, but that won’t stop us. In one of our latest shared showers, we spoke about our tattoos. C has five and I lost count of how many I have a long time ago.
The tattoo conversation started because I told him about my future plan: to get some of them removed. To get eight removed, to be specific, and that would still leave me with way more than fifteen—you can do the math.
My master plan is to wait for laser removal therapy to reach its peak and for me to make the most of it when the time comes. I’m in no rush, so I’d rather wait for this hope of mine to come to fruition. If AI can exist, I’m pretty sure that a machine that erases tattoos in one go with little pain can happen at some point too. As I said, it’s a feeling called hope.
C and I both laughed about the fact that we had gotten our tattoos before we were twenty-five, you know, before the age when that part of your brain fully develops. Some call it the prefrontal cortex, but we can call it the “part of your brain that stops you from making certain decisions”. C’s tattoos are hidden under his underpants, but mine are all over my arms and I have very little free space for any new ones.
I was told time and time again by all of my family members that tattoos are forever, that they’re permanent, that they can’t be erased, that I’d regret it, that they’re ugly, that they’d condition my future, that I’d be judged… The typical things adults say. And guess what? I don’t think they’re right.
They can, in fact, be erased because laser tattoo removal already exists, I just don’t want to pay to suffer repeatedly (yet) and I don’t believe in regretting your past anyway. I believe that regret makes sense when you don’t take action, when you’re too scared to try, when you back out because of what may happen. I’ve done the opposite of that pretty much my entire life and I’m pretty pleased with how it’s turned out so far. Stupid decisions are still decisions.
Do I have some tattoos that I don’t like aesthetically anymore? Yes. Did I get tattoos with people or about people I shouldn’t have? Yes. Did I choose lousy tattoo artists to save money? Yes. Do I regret any of them? Definitely not.
I regret not climbing the ginormous rock climbing wall I found set up outside of Decathlon when I was ten years old because I was scared of falling or failing in front of a crowd. I regret not singing louder in my parents house when we all still lived there. I regret not trying to skateboard in the skate parks because they were full of boys. I regret not dancing at Rosalia’s concert. I regret not passing my drivers license when I was eighteen. I regret not giving it my all on the ski slopes with my snowboard.
I regret all of the things I didn’t do and I don’t regret a single one of the ones I did do. It’s funny because the one thing I was repeatedly told I wouldn’t be able to erase were tattoos and it turns out that they can be removed, but nobody ever told me to observe my fear and my anxiety and not listen to them. That fear would always be a part of life and that it will never not be present. Nobody told me to feel the fear and to do it anyway. Nobody told me that fear disappears as soon as you take the first step. Nobody told me that life is about living it and leaving a story each place you go.
My tattoos have taught me that I have lived five different lives in the last eight years. My tattoos have shown me that what feels important in the moment will be a simple memory of the past years later. My tattoos have shown me that people come and go whether you like it or not, that your gestures of love might not be matched as you hoped they would. They’ve taught me that places are simply places and that the feeling of nostalgia lives in the heart and not on the skin. That ink fades as much as the memories do and that life is not about the past but about the present.
However, the tattoos that I wouldn’t laser off at this moment in time mean the world to me. They are fractions of life stuck on me like post-it notes, reminding myself of things my past self felt were important. The “do it” tattoo in red ink on my upper wrist reminds me of a past Emily paralysed by fear. The “tronqui” on my forearm reminds me of the person I love with my entire being. The fig tree leaf on my triceps reminds me that people we love pass away and that saying good-bye to them while honoring them is one of life’s biggest privileges. The coffee cup on my right arm reminds me of when I actively decided to change my life for the best. The tiny “trust” on my right hand reminds me that life always works out if you allow yourself to trust while free-falling. The number seven on the same hand reminds me that I’m guided. The three dots on the palm of my left hand remind me that no matter how far away he is, he has the exact same three dots on the palm of his hand too.
Would I go back in time and tell my younger self to hold off with the tattoos? Of course not. Would I like to tell all of the adults that they were right? Definitely not. Would I like to give younger Emily a hug and tell her that she did exactly what she wanted to do in those moments, that she loved with her whole heart, that she trusted people would take care of her, that she wanted to encapsule memories she was afraid of losing? Yes I would. And I’d tell her to remember to look at her right wrist and read the tattoo “more love” every day and remember that whatever she does with love will always be well done.
I already have my next tattoos in mind.
Stuff that involves me:
I’m working on Mail Club with Sofía Ostoic and we’ve started to prepare the February edition, so if you’d like to sign up and receive a letter written by me for Mail Club, a post card, sticker sheet and extra goodies all designed and created by Sofía, you can do so now! You have to sign up before the 15th of each month to receive that month’s issue. sofiaostoic.com/mail-club/
I have a joint project with C -
- called poda.server (we recommend books) and we have a monthly newsletter called poda.serving and it’s become one of my favourite things to prepare each month. We talk about how the project is going, how we’re feeling, problems that have been fixed, things that have made us happy, ideas we’ve had… A bit of everything. Read poda.serving 7 here.- and I have a podcast called FRAGMENTOS and this month we recorded a joint episode with and it’s now live! It’s the first time Carlota and I publish an episode with video so enjoy that too! You can subscribe to our podcast on Substack here: or you can listen to us on Spotify and Apple podcasts. This joint episode with Aquí No Hay Vermut is an advice column type episode. We asked our friends and listeners to send us questions and the four of us shared our experience and point of view. We spoke about motherhood, falling in love at the wrong time, love languages and intuition vs fear.
My January monthly vlog on YouTube is now live: you can watch it here. After re-evaluating what I want to do with my channel and how I want to show up, I feel ready to have some fun.
I turned on paid subscriptions in December and have been publishing paid posts on Substack now too. You can upgrade your subscription to 5 euros a month or get a discount on an annual subscription. Thank you to all of the people that have decided to sign up for paid 🤍
Things that don’t involve me:
I love
and I loved this latest issue all about fertility. So many amazing people have taken part in this issue and it’s packed with powerful and insightful information.- wrote this amazing essay about Tinder and the realities of being on the app here: yo tampoco sé qué hago en Tinder and I absolutely loved it. I laughed out loud reading it, it’s that good. Me río por no llorar de los tíos que hay por ahí, pero nonetheless, such a good essay.
This beautiful essay from
all about living alone to love yourself and others: loving is a lonely job.I don’t have a US library card or live in the US, but I really loved reading this: 10 free resources you can access with a library card in 2025.
- is my obsession and Gala is someone I call my friend, she’s my fashion guru and my second hand personal shopper. Her newsletter is packed full of valuable insights and information, and I think you should read it. Her latest essay is all about true style never going out of style and how the basics are the basics for a reason: Temporada de Atemporal. She helped me get my hands on some beautiful boat loafers, which haven’t arrived yet, so I’ll keep you posted. FYI, if you become a paid subscriber, you’ll have access to her list of best vintage finds on Vinted.
Los únicos tattoos que no puedes borrar son los que nunca te has hecho. Un abrazo, Emily!!
Loved this. Tattoos are such an interesting one. I don’t have any (genuinely never wanted one) but have gone through periods of wanting one just because everyone else had them. I think tattoos are beautiful and I love how they tell a story about all the things you care or once cared about, personal hieroglyphics on the body. I used to work with a guy who had a massive Blink 182 tattoo on his entire calf 🤣 he was super embarrassed about it but I thought it was so endearing that he had that imprint of his 18 year old self on him, all those years later.