It’s exactly a month today that I took the day off work and set off in my car to Cambridgeshire to get my second tattoo.
As of now, it’s continuing to heal pretty well, though there’s at least one spot that will need touching up – due to what I think was some skin cracking soon after I got it done.
It’s been interesting to track the healing process for this second tattoo, one that is in a position I can actually see. Unlike my first, which is on the back of my neck.
Even the slightly gross “shedding phase” was fascinating to me, seeing a layer of colour fall away, only to reveal more on the intact skin underneath.
But even more so, it’s been exciting to see the idea that I initially conceived, designed and brought to reality by my lovely tattoo artist Rianne Farrow, become a permanent feature on me. One that I can honestly say I don’t regret acquiring.
The same can probably be said for most people who don’t get a tattoo while in a drunken stupor, or on that ridiculous TV show from a few years back, Just Tattoo of Us, but it’s noteworthy in my case given that people were initially a little sceptical when I first announced my plans.
The idea wasn’t completely out of the blue, marking the next phase in a now recognised and ongoing minor obsession that I have developed on a particular cute and fluffy Disney character. But the tattoo is likely the pinnacle of it.
And having reached this extreme point in my fixation I was pushed to consider, in more depth than I had before, why it is that I have become so enamoured.
What is it about Stitch that speaks to me?
Besides his pretty colour scheme and adorable appearance, of course.
From merchandise to body modification
Some time ago, a couple of years, maybe more, the pandemic allowed me to work from home while I was in my first job – which later had us come back to the office on a hybrid basis and I have since left. But the point is that I had extra personal time thanks to the lack of a commute, and some of it I used to indulge in nostalgia.
In particular, watching movies that I vaguely remembered enjoying in my youth. And on that list was Lilo & Stitch.
What came after didn’t happen right away, but it happened. Slowly but surely, and no doubt exacerbated by the seemingly random emergence of Stitch-emblazoned clothing and accessories in stores, I started to collect items sporting the familiar blue character.
A pop-socket and deck of cards here, a calendar, notebook, and mousepad there, and more than one piece of clothing. But it’s a long way from owning ultimately useful things bearing his image to getting it permanently inked on my lower calf.
The first time I really considered the seemingly dramatic move was when someone essentially asked my why.
I responded with “he’s me”.
I said it half-jokingly and, at the time, I only vaguely appreciated that I meant something by it. But having rewatched the movie again more recently to improve my understanding of how I got here, I know now that it’s true.
At least in some ways.
If you haven’t seen Lilo & Stitch – which you may not want to given the current sentiment towards Disney – it is a found family film centring around the two titular characters. Lilo is a young girl in her older sister’s care after the death of their parents. Meanwhile Stitch is a genetically engineered alien, also known as Experiment 626, that finds himself on Earth after escaping “the Galactic Federation” which decided he was too dangerous to be allowed to exist.
Because cute and fluffy though he is, Stitch was created to destroy.
In the movie, he initially has no issue with his nature. He just accepts what he is because he doesn’t know anything else. And he goes about being destructive, without any concern over his actions or their consequences.
He only starts to tamp down his instincts once Lilo & Nani find him and take him in – and only as a means to an end. It allows him to keep them close, as a human shield of sorts, to protect him from other aliens, sent by the federation to recapture him.
But as he spends more time with the sisters and witnesses how they care for each other and the connection they have – despite the inevitable sibling fights – he starts to crave that for himself. So he stops being deliberately destructive, and starts to participate in their bonding experiences.
But the trouble following him sadly means that even with his improved behaviour, mishaps find the family. And after yet another puts the family in hot water, Stitch leaves.
Faced with the situation that the family that found him is about to be torn apart, and the loss of a home where he was still only trying to belong, he climbs out of Lilo’s window, only taking with him her extremely edited-down copy of the ugly duckling; One page depicting a lonely and lost duck, and on the next he is found by his family of swans.
The book had been one that Stitch must have felt a connection to earlier, grabbing his attention as soon as he first saw it, but it’s only at this point that he expresses why. Sitting alone in the dark, in a quiet spot in the woods not far from the family’s home, he says the little duck’s words: “I’m lost”.
Then he waits all night to be found.
This is the point in the movie where my “he’s me” comment hits the nail on the head.
Though I have never actually run away, I can admit that I often emotionally if not physically separate myself from people. When I’m not choosing to stay at home over experiences with friends and could-be friends, I’m avoiding letting anyone get too far past my defences when I do social and interact with others.
Yet all the while hoping to find or be found by people that will understand and accept, even love me, for who I am. People that I can connect with.
Just like Stitch.
While the distance that we each put between ourselves and others may protect us from the possibility of ultimately being rejected, it makes it hard to find the very connection that we so crave. In Stitch’s case shown by his decision to leave, even when Lilo implores him that things could work out if he only stayed.
It’s not until his night spent alone, after a family he doesn’t know doesn’t exist that Stitch realises that Lilo and Nani may be the only shot he has at one. And a dramatic save later, as he’s about to be forced to leave them behind forever, Stitch finally accepts them as such and, in doing so, allows them to fully embrace him in return.
Verbalising this he says: “This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It’s little…and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.”
Gets me every time. And the alien council leader that initially ordered his capture is evidently affected too, because she easily accepts an excuse to let him stay.
Unlike Stitch, I don’t have the fact that I’m in a kids movie – that I know of – offering me the comforting likelihood of a happy ending. But, in any case, I’m ready to take the risk of being hurt if it means a chance to fully realise the connections I have with people already around me, and perhaps form more.
That will no doubt mean a difficult journey ahead, as I push myself to break my patterns and open up to more possibilities, but I’m set on taking it.
And if I ever find myself again, daunted at the prospect of being hurt, or wavering in my efforts, well there’s a cute blue image on my lower calf to remind me of the happiness that can find me, if I just let it.
I rewatched Yes Man recently and realised that, at the beginning of the movie, Jim Carrey’s character is closed off to people and life, in pretty similar ways to how I feel I have been. I was vaguely considering the “yes” concept as I’ve started taking little steps to being more open – which happened before this post went up but inspired by my musings as I wrote it – but I didn’t remember those similarities prior to seeing the movie again.
On being reacquainted with the entire plot, a thought I has was “thank God it was Lilo and Stitch that I wanted back then and not this”. Otherwise, I might be sitting here now with a middle-aged white guy tattooed on my leg and not a cute cartoon character😂.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this blogpost and my time away hasn’t detrimentally impacted my skills in this department.
I certainly enjoyed the process of creating it and hope to get more up this year.
Amandah with an 'h' 