caring for the wound
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1. It’s only been the last two tattoos that have gotten the Tegaderm treatment. By that I mean I didn’t have to worry about a bandage for the first five days, and the covering wasn’t compromised (peeling, allowing air or water in, etc.), so the healing felt faster and the care easier. The first time I had Tegaderm, last April, it covered a part of my hand and with all the motions I make with my left hand, including writing, a tiny corner had lifted and I had to remove it and go back to the old way I know how to care for a tattoo. This time it’s wrist and above, on the right arm, and ambidextrous as I am, my right arm does a lot more motion than my left, and even so, the integrity of the Tegaderm maintained. After five days, when I lifted it off my skin under running water, the design was vibrant, and had already undergone most of the itching and peeling. Every time I look up how Tegaderm works exactly I’m mystified or disturbed: it “can keep the wound bed in a moist environment.” Eeew, I say. How this kind of transparent material allows a wound to breathe feels remarkable.
2. I self-harmed myself, I say to my partner when I get a new tattoo. I’m half-joking. I have read articles and chapters on self-harm, as a therapist, as a curious person who has not, in the “traditional” ways, self-harmed. Cutting, personally, has never appealed to me. I’ve spoken with others who have a history with cutting or other forms of self-harm, wondering if they might consider substituting these behaviors with the more socially sanctioned act of getting a tattoo. I’ve wondered if they might experience a similar relief. I can only speak from the place of having experienced tremendous relief (endorphins, satisfaction in body and mind) in the soothing sounds and bodily sensation of a long session with a gentle artist.
3. Wounding as a way of healing. Then caring for the wound. Watching through a transparent window as the process begins. Prior to a new tattoo, as I age, I notice all the ways I prepare for it, so unlike the way I approached tattoos in my youth. I began 30 years ago. With the most recent ones, I prepare by making sure I get enough sleep in the days prior and most definitely in the days after. I take my vitamins. On the day of I eat well, mindful of iron. Ten days ago, when I sat for my most recent, I scheduled myself to do a lot of resting/nothing in the few days following—nowhere to be, less need to shower (which could lightly compromise the Tegaderm), a reprieve from washing dishes for a couple of weeks while the healing takes place. I remember that in the past I may have never taken this much care, but in the past I was also much younger, with a more robust immune system, even though I tended to trash my body with so much alcohol or various drugs. I also remember, looking around at the world, that so many people got a tattoo and didn’t take care of it at all, and everyone turned out fine. Fine enough, by appearances, anyway. It reminds me of how, when my kid was transitioning out of diapers, I used to have anxieties about whether she would EVER be able to use a toilet. I’d look around at the world and remember, person by person, that all of these people, no matter what their circumstances of caregiving was, eventually learned how to use a toilet (probably! Highly likely, anyway!) A miracle! Or maybe just a miracle to those of us who had to train someone else to use them. In any case: observing the people, strangers, around me, reminds me that IT WILL BE OKAY. I will be okay.
4. By accident I discovered that I experience ASMR while watching videos of a fresh tattoo being wiped clean. I shared this with the artist who has done my last two. The shop where she works posts Instagram stories and the ones where I see a tattoo being made—the hypnotic buzzing sound, the gloved hands working, then the application of a towel, moistened with alcohol, wiping the fresh tattoo into something nearly iridescent.
We discover, IRL, that I don’t have the same response—she asks me, after a couple hours, if I am getting ASMR when she wipes. I am not. But I know now that at least I have one other form of attaining that sweet feeling, aside from the soft spray sounds from a pump bottle that have transported me my whole life, before even learning about ASMR. The vision of gloved hands working also inject me with a beautiful cocktail of neurochemicals.
5. A breathable, waterproof material, a material that protects and allows. A barrier against that which could potentially infect, while underneath, a process occurs. The body kickstarts repair of the wound, silently, efficiently under the best circumstances. Whenever I read about it, I think, Impenetrable/penetrable. A condition, maybe, that I’ve been in search of, as a self, for as long as I’ve had consciousness. Or at least as long as I have experienced wounds, both bodily and psychic. ‘Repair’ is a concept that I invoke regularly, in my work as a therapist. I am thinking of the repair of the skin, the knitting of cells that have been forced undone, as much as I’m thinking of the repair of something greater, beyond me, the wounds of my city/the state/the country/the hemisphere/the world. Where does the repair begin/end—could it ever end? The need seems to always be there.
6. Meanwhile, my right arm boasts new colors, a clever illustration of a magical flora that I decided to carry with me until all my cells cease to repair. An imaginary blossom that never dies, caught in a moment. Stilled, until I become completely, utterly penetrable.
