My friends, however, tell me that tattoos are addictive. At the moment I have no plans for any further ink. I will say, however, that whoever thinks of these things had better put the brakes on new mental health-related tattoo designs – especially those made of punctuation – or I will soon become the illustrated editor/blogger. For the rest of my life I can use them to educate, identify with other bipolar people, and remind myself that wrists are not for cutting. They say something about who I am, something that will not change as I grow older. The disorder will always be with me and so will these symbols. I think I can say with complete confidence that I will never regret these tattoos.
The second tattoo is on my right wrist, so no matter which hand I extend, I can open up new understanding about a very real problem that many people live with daily.Ī number of articles have come out lately questioning whether a person who gets a tattoo will regret it when they grow older. It’s a lot less abrupt than blurting out, “Hey, I have a mental illness!” Even my mother-in-law recognizes that these tattoos are not just a whim, but for a good cause. Since I have gone public with having a mental illness, it seems only appropriate to introduce people to the disorder in a way that’s creative, nonthreatening, and understandable. This is particularly true of bipolar disorder type 2 – the kind I have – which many people have never even heard of. Bipolar disorder is not well understood by the general public. In a way, it’s a minimalist version of the comedy and tragedy masks you often see in theaters.Īgain, it’s a conversation starter. This symbolism is easier for anyone seeing the tattoo to grasp. Instead they make up a double emoticon: looked at one way, the colon and paren make up a smiley face. These symbols, unlike the semicolon, have no special meaning in writing and are never seen together in that order. Again it’s made up of punctuation: two colons and a paren. My new tattoo represents bipolar disorder. You can find out more about the semicolon project at . Then I can tell them that it’s a whole lot more. Most people will assume that since I am a huge grammar nerd, my semicolon tattoo is some weird manifestation of love for punctuation. The semicolon says, in effect, “My story isn’t over.” The idea is to have the tattoo someplace visible – in my case, on my left wrist – and use it as a conversation starter. The semicolon was chosen as the symbol because in writing, a semicolon indicates a place where a writer could have completed – or stopped – a sentence, but chose to go on. For those of you who aren’t up on the terminology, a semicolon tattoo represents mental health awareness, especially erasing the stigma, and suicide prevention. Once again I have gotten a tattoo, supporting the cause of mental health.Ī few months ago, I became a part of what’s called the semicolon project and wrote about it in this post.
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