It may just be because I’m a super nosy person, but I love knowing the meaning (or if there even is any) behind the ink on someone’s skin. It can be really personal – or not – but regardless, I think it’s so interesting to know why people choose certain things to put on their body forever. If you’re interested, or just nosy like me, here are the meanings behind my tattoos:
1. “1922”
1922 is the house address of my Mummum’s house (Mummum is my name for my grandma because she’s cool and deserves a cool name). My Mummum practically raised me as an infant because my mother was very sick after she had me, so that house was a staple of my childhood. My sister and I spent every day after school there while my parents were at work, and funny enough, I actually live in that house now that my Mummum moved. This house was a home, and I want to carry it with me wherever I am.
2. “99C”
In the same day that I got my first tattoo – the “1922” – I got my 99C piece as well. This one is kind of funny in a way, because I always wanted some sort of funny little ankle tattoo, and this was as far as I could push it without it being actually ridiculous. As much as you might think it doesn’t, it actually does have a meaning behind it. My younger (and only) sister, Courtney (hence the C), was born in 1999 (hence the 99).
3. “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”
This tattoo is another homage to Mummum. In reference to the famous song by Marvin Gaye, she used to, and still does, say to me all the time: “There ain’t no mountain high enough to keep me away from you.” She writes it in birthday cards, texts messages, tells me at the end of phone conversations, and generally whenever she can fit it in. If we want to get really mushy here, I could say that I use this as my everyday motivation.
4. “B214”
If there’s one person I love in this world besides my Mummum (and my parents), it’s my best friend, Kacey. We’ve been friends for about five years, but it feels like eternity. Without knowing us personally, you might find it difficult to believe that we got matching tattoos after not such a long time of being friends, but to everyone that does know us, it makes sense that we would bond ourselves with ink. B214 is the name of the computer lab in our high school that we became friends in. Although that’s not the room where we met, it’s the room where it all began.
5. Female Symbol
In the same day as the B214 tattoo, I also got my finger tattoo done as well; I seem to have a thing for two-in-one-day tattoos. I decided on this tattoo a few months ago, actually right around election time. Leading up the 2016 election, I started paying more attention to the media, and it made me feel some type of way, you know? I learned to love myself as a woman even more than I already did, and I thought it was the perfect kind of irony to get it on my middle finger, to say sort of a “F**k you” to the patriarchy and the other horrible people out there who degrade, neglect, abuse, and terribly treat women on a daily basis. GIRLS RULE!
I started out 2017 with no tattoos, and ended it with five – and people say I can’t make commitments! Besides the fact that my sister said I now look like the Da Vinci Code with all of the numbers on my body, I love that I get to carry these sentiments with me everywhere I go.