Participant of Project Semi Colon
Eating My Words: Getting a Semi Colon Tattoo
I always swore that I would never get a tattoo.
I recoiled several years ago when my best friend lifted up her shirt to show me hers.
Sure, they looked good on some, and I admired the creative design and creativity and artistry that body art has on others.
Still--the thought of permanently inking my body didn’t set well with me—what if it didn’t turn out like I wanted or thought it would? What if—over time—it looked different than it did initially? As I grew older and saggier? I thought of the pain--What if it hurt like hell? And how could it not with little needles going into your flesh?
Frankly, thinking about all of that made me cringe and make a face. It still does, as I write this.
But in the fall of this year, 2021, I ate those words. And I got one.
I now have a semi colon tattoo on the middle finger of my right hand, my writing hand. It is hidden slightly, but slightly visible if I move my fingers. Symbolic perhaps of the just barely visible presence of mental illness and mental health struggles.
The semi colon project (https://projectsemicolon.com/) is a grassroots organization that was started to promote mental health awareness and advocacy for those experiencing mental illness, and for those who know and have lost someone to suicide.
The goal is to promote visibility, in efforts to de-stigmatize mental illnesses, with a visible sign, a semi colon, (temporary or permanent) to show others that they are not alone. That there are others; there is support and solidarity ou there. Even if you don’t have a conversation with a person, you may see the semi colon and know that there are others journeying through mental health episodes and mental illnesses.
The deep need for this makes much sense. After all, mental disabilities are often not visible. For those of us struggling, outwardly, we appear able-bodied…or, able-minded.
Sure, there are privileges and advantages to this that we may keep this hidden and don’t immediately have to disclose a disability from outward appearances such as with physical disabilities.
Yet, there is also insidious harm there; it further compounds the stigmatization:
We are less likely to know that others are struggling as well, to have visible community. And with mental illness, which is too often still misunderstood as a character deficiency, a moral failure, or a lack of faith, or not as serious as a “real” physical condition, we can understand why we still remain hidden and why people stay silent about it.
The need for visibility, for transparency, is there. It is important.
And for me, personally, as an English professor and writer—semi colons are my favorite. They are my preferred, and, quite frankly, most overused punctuation markers.
For those who aren’t quite so nerdy or who simply don’t care about grammar (fair enough), or if you haven’t ridiculous amounts of time in English classes and writing, I’ll explain:
Semi colons hold together two complete clauses or full sentences, showing that there is a close relationship between the two. They exist because you are not supposed to hold together two full complete sentences with a comma. Grammatically, it is an error and called a comma splice, a favorite red pen marking among English teachers and college professors.
To correct it, you either end the sentence with a period and start another. Or, you can use a semi colon to join the two and show a closer relationship between the two full clauses.
Therefore, the symbolism behind the semi colon makes sense, when applied to those struggling with depressive thoughts, suicidal ideation or inclination. In that—You could choose to end the sentence, or your story, your life, now. But you don’t. Instead, you choose to continue.
It’s a reminder to keep going but also a reminder that you have agency and the ultimate call is yours.
Part of my decision to get the semi colon was that notion of self-empowerment, ownership, and taking agency to own my own story and that of my family’s.
After my brother’s suicide in 2020, I spent many difficult months in trauma-healing (EMDR) therapy, trying to understand how I could accept what my family’s story and what my two relatives (50% of my immediate family) had done.
I ached with the pain and awareness that their actions would forever shape and influence me and my story. Yet, at the same hand, how could I make it so I that while I acknowledged that, it also did not define me altogether?
This grappling was especially hard as the overthinker child of an alcoholic, the one who assumed the hero role. Ever since I was a child, I feigned outward normalcy and scholarly success for the benefit of the family. I was good at acting and good at pretending all was well and that I had my shit together to show that my family wasn’t all that bad, a common learned behavior in dysfunctional families (thank you, Awareness Theatre). I learned to do this and it has been a survival mechanism. It has helped me to push through some pretty challenging times. But it comes with a price and eventually I had to come to terms with the truth of what I was trying to cover up.
I always have had a pretty strong sense of self, knowing who I was, independently. But I was deeply troubled by all the ways that these suicides have shaped, where I am defined by my family members’ choices.
I knew I would be naïve to think otherwise, to pretend that they didn’t affect me. So, I struggled with the balance, to understand how could I learn from them and take ownership of the influence that their choices had on me, the way that these trials shaped my character… The balance was to embrace the good that came of them, how it made me stronger and sharpened my character, without feeling disempowered that their exits forever ruined my life.
Quite honestly, I still struggle with this. Honestly, though my heart breaks for my father and brother, sometimes I am pissed at them. I understand this to be normal and that I am allowed to feel this anger because it is not all there is. I am allowed to feel frustrated that it feels like they took their hurt and chose to exit, taking the easier route out and leaving the rest of us with the baggage to pick up and carry on, the harder path.
But, I can also hold space for them because they were deeply mentally ill and wounded, not in their right minds and in a literal living hell. One that I do, I can to a degree, understand. I also understand that the endings of their lives are simply parts of their story; they too do not define them and their entire selves. They are so much more than how they died. Just like there is so much more to my story than their final acts.
I accept their influence on my story and that I am a survivor.
So, in getting a semi colon, I also own mental illness and mental health struggles. To acknowledge the times that I too have endured paths with major depression, extreme generalized anxiety disorder and suicide ideation, where I too just wanted it to all end, for the pain to stop. Where nothingness can seem like a dream.
So, for them and me, and for others, I wear a semi colon, to show that I am a family suicide survivor. To remind myself that I am strong. That I am still here, though they are not. I survived. I still struggle at points to survive, but I do; I make that choice day by day. I continue on.
And I wear it because I want others to know that they are not alone. And if it makes even one person feel less depressed, less inclined to suicide, and more supported, it is worth it.
Finally, I wear it in honor of Amy Bleuel who started the semi colon project movement. Amy lost her own father to suicide in 2013 and began the project to honor him.
Though Amy herself struggled with depression and completed suicide in 2017 at the age of 31.
Amy, your advocacy, work and influence remain. And we are so grateful for all of it. Your efforts are not in vain. Rest in power, warrior.