In my mission to keep myself sane, and to keep on adding to my personal life toolbox (I think I already mentioned this in my previous blog posts), I learnt how to play the ukulele. For the past few years, playing has been my go-to activity. It conveys much of my emotions. They have been my non-living best friends. They have felt me cry, seen me broken hearted and shattered; they have sensed my happiness, my misplaced anxieties and basically, just about almost everything I went through these past few years.

Whenever I cannot dish out my feelings and thoughts just yet, whenever being around people has been so tiring, whenever life has been so funny and at the same time boring, whenever I want to crawl out my skin, I would turn to my ukulele and play. They were my witness of how I try to cope by reminding  myself, "better days are coming".

And hence, it was only befitting to my slightly egotistical self to get a ukulele tattoo. 

It happened three months ago, back in the Philippines. Outside a small studio in the heart of Makati shines a banner in pink led lights that say TATTOO. The room felt cozy, and inviting with dark blue walls and wooden chairs for the waiting clients. There were even board games to keep the clients busy while waiting. It was an afternoon, with the sun shining in the background.

It was planned, and not a spontaneous decision like the second tattoo on my forearm. Amongst all the three I had, this, by far, is my favorite because I thought of the design myself. I gave a draft to the artist, and let them do their magic.

After some deliberation with the artist, I lie down in the leather bed with the white light focused on me. The process then started. It was painful, a kind of excruciating pain that I knew I longed for. The sound of the needle was like bulldozing my skin, slowly but gently. My hands were sweating coldly, dripping out of my body like a sorbet in a hot summer day.

When it was finally finished, after a merely an hour, I got up and went straight into the mirror. I felt satisfied. There it goes, my non-living best friend inked into my fragile body. 

Noticed the semicolon on the first string. I've always wanted to get a semi-colon tattoo, but I want it to be unique and unlike the others I see on the internet. And I think my idea came out nicely.

Some of my friends don't really like how it looked in the end. But I don't care at all, as long as I liked the outcome, their opinions don't matter at all.

Seemingly, only a few people who know me well would actually know what this tattoo is.