Tattoo: in memoriam. Also, other stuff.

Shira and I at the national Jr. College forensics tournament in 2009.
We were roommates on that trip to Portland, and we were awesome. :)

Some of you know, some don't, about my dear friend Shira who passed away this year. I knew her from Tallahassee where we performed in shows and competed together on the forensics team. Shira had an auto-immune disease called Scleroderma which causes the tissue in your body to harden from the outside in. The disease eventually began attacking her lungs, and while she was on the transplant list, she was unfortunately unable to recieve a transplant before things got too desperate. She passed on March 19th, and even though I hadn't seen her in over a year at that point, I still miss her every day. Shira was one of the strongest people I knew, and she fought till the very end to maintain a positive outlook on life. She was a standup comic, an incredible actress, and one of the most genuinely nice people I've ever known.

The day that Shira passed away I decided I wanted to get a tattoo in her honor. Her name means Song-Bird, and i've toyed with several different images, even had a tattoo artist sketch something for me, but nothing struck me as perfect until just a few days ago.

I found this image while trolling my tumblr dashboard. I followed the credit links to a Flickr page and then to the artist's blogspot page (Lovely Sweet William is the blog it was originally posted on). I've commented on the original blog post asking the artist's permission to modify the piece slightly for my Shira tattoo, because THIS bird is perfect. I want to simplify the "song" the bird is singing, and instead of there being a color wheel behind the bird, I'd like to put color into the "song". Its lovely, and, if the artist doesnt mind, I'll be taking it to my friend who does tattoos and asking him to help me perfect it for my skin.

I'm all emotionally lately. And all I want to do is get tattooed. Seriously. It's been almost two years since my last one and I'm all itchy for ink.

We're moving TOMORROW, to our cute little new house which is just about 10 minutes north of campus.

I'm really looking forward to not living in the house we've been in. I hate this house, and our new house is so pretty and clean and full of no memories yet. It needs to be a clean slate, and I'm hoping it'll help me process some emotions I havent fully dealt with yet. Its been a long year so far, and We're only just halfway through.