Planned trips, gamer tags, and grief
My first tattoo was something I constantly put off. I couldn’t find the right artist, I couldn’t find the right design, or the money I saved for it ended up going somewhere else. All I knew was that I wanted it to be big and to mean something.
During COVID, my best friend—who had been in remission for years—was told his cancer had come back, and it was aggressive. He was scared and worried that he wouldn’t have the support system to continue living on his own.
So I did what any friend would do: I took what resources I had and moved to the Quad Cities to help—and to enjoy being friends in person again. To distract ourselves while in the hospital, we talked about trips we would go on, slowly creating a plan to travel the world.
There were a lot of plans made, but my favorite was the idea of going to Komodo Island in Indonesia to see Komodo dragons in the wild among cherry blossom trees. Eventually, it dawned on me that it would also make the perfect tattoo. So I found an artist I liked and made an appointment as quickly as I could.
Unfortunately, my friend passed before I could get it and show him—or go on any of those trips. So I wanted to add something to the design to memorialize him in some way.
Luckily, Andrew was more than accommodating and happy to incorporate the addition. We settled on an alchemist flask releasing a phoenix, a reference to my friend’s gamer tag and his favorite DnD character.
It was worth the wait for my first tattoo.