You heard that right, people! This gal has gotten her very first tattoo at the ripe ol’ age of 28. I have always wanted tattoos! The artistry, the colors, the fonts, the meanings behind them! Good golly Miss Molly, the possibilities are endless. Then life happens. Money has to go here and you have to pay for this and rent is due. Then you get preggers and raise babies and start a small business. Then you realize, that you have aged 10 years and think back to your bucket list and you have only marked off a handful of things out of 100.
I have written this blog post 3 or 4 times in the last 24 hours since I sat in the chair at Top Shelf Tattoo Studio in Manchester, NH. And none of them sounded…right. They didn’t resonate with the reasons why I finally jumped at the opportunity to get “inked”. None of them had the right amount of awkward humor and sentimental value of what this small tattoo means to me.
So, in a short story: I have struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember. In high school it was obsessively washing my hands, when my mom got sick it was pretending that she was fine, when my mom died it was helicopter parenting my first born (and eating so much chocolate that I swear to God it turned my breastmilk into chocolate milk) and when I sat down watching school shootings on the news it turned into “how dare I be so selfish to bring two little humans into this world when disaster is how the world thrives.”.
Then came June 2019. It was finally Summer time here in New England! My girls and I were walking out of our apartment building when I spotted two kittens walking across our lot. As we walked closer they started climbing into my neighbors tires! One of them was literally snuggled on her break pads, and the other was hanging by it’s little neck on the rim. So, I did what any person would do and called animal control and also helped the kitten get back into the tire instead of dangling there. In the process I was scratched by said kitten. When animal control arrived she told me that I needed to get checked for Rabies. I was thinking to keep it clean to prevent infections or Cat Scratch fever, NEVER did it occur to me that I could have contracted freaking RABIES! So, of course I waited the 10 day incubation period to see if they would call me to notify that the poor little guy was rabid. Those were the 10 LONGEST damn days of my life. And my youngest was 5 days late! I was so scared that I was going to give rabies to my kids by just giving them kisses! It was awful. And during this time my oldest had some random rash that had shown up and we were told it was 4 different things. It has been over two weeks and she still has marks left on her body from where this rash was. Talk about an anxiety overload. I wasn’t sleeping. I had NO TIME to. I was constantly looking up rashes and how to not die from rabies. Which if you don’t get the series of shots within a week of being infected you will die once signs start showing up in your body. What a way to go out. I can see it now! “Here lies Kendra-anne Peters. Wife. Mother. Savior of kitten that died anyways and gave her rabies so she died too being only the second person in NH to die from rabies in over 20 years”.
All of this prompted getting a tattoo, because obviously, I am rabies free. There was no call saying the kittens were rabid. There was no press conference held by the DPD. I’m not gonna die. Well, I mean, I will eventually just not from rabies. I hope.
It is a constant reminder that no matter what anxieties I face, I can handle them. It may take a few days and a WebMD search and taking my meds and maybe going for a walk in nature barefoot, but I will be okay.
So, here it is! This is my small reminder that I have got this. Always.
