I got a tattoo, which means I’m cool now. Pretty uncharacteristic of me. I’m trying this new thing where I try new things. I like tattoos. I think they’re cool. They’re just one of those things I’ve always seen other people have but have never really stopped to think about whether or not I wanted one. I have a pretty passive disposition. You could describe me as chill. Very chill. So chill I hadn’t ever considered getting a tattoo. Too chill for tattoos is approaching absolute zero. Don’t pathologize the chill. It’s hard. Too chill can be bad. It’s why I’m trying to do new things. Get out of my comfort zone a little bit.

It’s healing well I think. It was a little spooky for a second. Just red and peeling. A little tingly. Never warm to the touch or too swollen or discolored or anything else that might suggest infection. I did pretty well at making sure it stayed clean I think. I worried, despite my efforts. Thawed a little. Worried the chill had taken such hold within my being that my body would reject it. Make no effort to keep it around. Shrug it off the way I do. That it would get red and peel off and heal like nothing had ever been there. Take my freckles with it, the only evidence that anything had ever been there being that something is now clearly not. Not a rational fear but not totally unfounded.

I have a number of autoimmune diseases. Alopecia has made sure I haven’t had a decent hair day since I was seventeen. Also eczema. They both ebb and flow in their own ways. Alopecia is always there but varies in its severity. Eczema likes to come and go in advances and retreats that last years at a time. I’m pretty chill about it. They show up and do their thing and I keep going. Eczema is pretty brutal. It shows up gradually and I do a pretty good job at ignoring it while it scouts out a good area of attack. When it eventually picks a battlefield it gets pretty bloody pretty quick. It digs in. Patches of skin up to a few inches long become red and cracked. Itchy and sickly feeling. Even when I can resist scratching during the day I’ll wake up doing it anyways. It becomes impossible for me to remain cool about it. My unconscious self takes things into its own hands and decides to end things violently, mindlessly, because it has no other option. Wake up to bloody fields of forearm. Trenches dug by reactive and impatient fingernails made to do something about the invading force while the incompetent commander sleeps. Casualties are common. I’m left with a number of memorials on my arms and hands. Empty fields once host to visceral injury are now absent even of freckles.

I’ve been thinking about joining a boxing gym. Part of the New Thing thing. Plus I need the exercise. Not my thing at all. Kind of directly opposite of my thing. I don’t believe in self-defense. At least not as a large-ish bearded white guy. I don’t think there will ever be a situation I’ll need to use violence to get out of. Maybe it’s naive, but I just don’t think I have anything anyone would want or feel like they’d have to use violence to get. I’m coward-ing out every single time, no question. Want my wallet? Literally just ask.

But I want to join a boxing gym. I want to learn how to fight. I want to learn what is appealing about it for people and what I might be missing out on by stifling my curiosity. By being too chill. Or stubborn maybe. If I can leave a boxing gym having not lost a piece of myself, maybe having gained something, maybe even having fought for it, then I can fight elsewhere. The doctor’s office. I can fight for some answers. See if the reaction I had to my tattoo is related to the way my body reacts to my freckles. Open myself to some nuance and stop future violence by fighting for what matters proactively. Seek a diagnosis and treatment for what may be a third autoimmune symptom. Sometimes the joints in my fingers become so stiff it’s impossible to open my fists.