I’m learning that I need to see what you see in me otherwise, it’s too easy to fixate on the failures and inabilities that I feel inside. It’s not too hard to disguise those things. If you look at me today, you might not be able to tell that my arm and my hand ache constantly, that my head is throbbing and that I’m sometimes a wreck emotionally and spiritually. What injury and illness and depression steal from you most of all is perspective – the ability to understand that there’s more to be written in your story. I think of it as an equivalent to Noah’s rainbow – a beacon of hope. I put the small tattoo on the arm that failed me, and I put it where I can see it every day as a reminder of how far I’ve come. The struggle is to see injury and illness and despair as a semicolon and not a period. The struggle is to welcome life as it is now, which is certainly different than you thought it would be or should be. “What injury and illness and depression steal from you most of all is perspective – the ability to understand that there’s more to be written in your story.” Then I had an invasive follow-up test that left me with a slow and chronic spinal fluid leak that creates a never-ending headache. Then I had surgery to solve the problem and ended up with a spinal cord injury that immobilized my right arm and hand for months. The story began with increasing neck pain that became excruciating throughout last fall, pain that didn’t respond to conservative therapies and that was so unbearable it left me one step short of being suicidal.
I got this mark placed on my inner bicep on about the one-year anniversary of when my body started rebelling against me. The meaning of the semicolon is this: “Your story is not over.” It’s not a period, which ends a sentence it’s a pause that says there’s more to come.
The trademark of this initiative is the semicolon tattoo, which serves as a visible witness to hope, both for the person who struggles or has died and for their family and friends. He asked the question because he was well aware of Project Semicolon, an initiative that brings hope to people who suffer from depression, have struggled with suicidal ideation or have experienced traumatic events that left them in despair. When I told the artist what I wanted, he asked: “Who is this for?” Just imagine this fair-skinned, middle-aged, uncool pastor walking into a tattoo parlor on the hipster stretch of Lower Greenville in Dallas, and you’ll get the image. But this is a tattoo with a purpose – as I suspect many are.
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