: This is my very first tattoo.  I spent too much time wanting one, and trying to come up with the perfect thing to place permanently on my body.  I took a hiatus to Florence Italy for a month, and decided that a trip like that should be completed with a tattoo if nothing more than to remind me why I took the trip.  

I traveled on my 28th birthday 45 minutes outside of Florence, by bus to be told, in very broken English, that it would be next to impossible to get so long a word on such a small space.  That, and I needed to come back, as they do not take same day appointments.  I was leaving in nine days, so they had to squeeze me in with a man named Bepe.  He didn’t speak a lick of English, but communicated with me just fine (mostly through the front desk attendant, who had a hard time with me as well).  I studied Italian for three months before this trip - my preparation was nowhere near suitable.  He reluctantly made the words as small as he could, and the appointment took 20 minutes; from when he positioned the stencil to when he wiped the ink off my wrist.  It took me longer to get to the shop than it took him to do the job.  Every day I love it a little more.  It has meaning that I can carry with me for the rest of my life.  

It is meant to remind me that our lives have meaning everywhere we go.  We change the world with every step we take.  I decided I don’t want to belong just anywhere, I want to belong everywhere.  This tattoo is meant to remind me to take the chances I dream of taking.  To make the connections, decisions and mistakes I insist on making.  So often times I am discouraged by the world around me.  Now I have a constant reminder that I have to keep pushing forward, and make my own way.  Societal restrictions hold no barring to dreams.