dreaming of the needle.

last night, i had a tattoo nightmare. in it, i arrived at the tattoo place to see the design the artist has been working on for me for a month. it looked like a really bad print ad with an entire paragraph of script written in terrible cursive, a faded old-western town in one corner and a lifestyle shot of a mother and daughter in the other corner. it was all in sepia tones and it was hideous. for some reason, in my dream, i took my mom with me to get the tattoo. she took a look at the art and said, "it looks great to me." i grabbed it from her and said, "um, this isn't exactly what i had in mind."

so instead, i ended up getting a string of flowers beginning on the top of my middle finger with a tiny rose and exploding all the way up and around my arm into lilies and gerber daisies and sunflowers and then becoming a half sleeve where reds and yellows and blues and greens were filled in until it ended all the way up my neck to that place right behind my ear where a single rose with thorns was placed.

while i was getting "inked" the tattoo artist was 'testing my skin' and he was using the needle in this very aggressive manor and saying, "this should really be hurting now, are you sure you can't feel it?" and i was like, "no, i feel nothing."

and that's when i decided that i was meant to get this tattoo. because if i hadn't, i would never have known that i had this strange disorder where my skin couldn't feel the needle piercing. not only could i now be on "medical incredible" and other similar shoes on the learning channel, i also now had a new mission in life -- to become painted. the illustrated lady, if you will.

and then, i woke up.