Poppies.
I saw them all over the Netherlands. They were the pop of color in every field or yard, and I always felt drawn to them. They were so common that no one ever minded if I picked them. I dried them in notebooks, gave them to my friends and professors, and kept them in my overalls pockets as we explored Amsterdam together. They were the bright points that held my trip, in all of its hard-to-swallow truths, together.
I knew I wanted to get a tattoo before I left. It only made sense that I would get a poppy. A beautiful reminder of all the little things in Amsterdam that made that time so special. A permanent memento on my body and a physical manifestation of the changes that I felt.
I chose a day and booked an appointment. The day before I left Amsterdam and that summer forever.
My last couple days were a frustrating flurry of finishing final projects and slowly having to let go of doing all of the things I wanted to do before I left. I spent longer than I expected on my final paper and found myself with less than 12 hours left in the city and a tattoo appointment I was bound to be late for. Running around, preparing to bike to the shop, my friends bailed on me last minute, and I had to set out alone. I was exhausted, frustrated, and sad as I biked. Late and lost, I was already feeling like Amsterdam was slipping through my fingers and that this bike ride would be the only goodbye I would get. I get to the shop and meet with my artist, who immediately makes me feel uneasy. He is rude and mad at me, and makes me wait an hour until the shop closes to even talk to me. My heart sank. There was an end-of-trip party that night, and I was going to be cutting it close time-wise. This delay meant that I would most likely be missing it entirely. The shop closed and I still waited. I finally met with my artist again, and he was a total and complete asshole with no regard for how I felt or even who I was. Everything felt wrong. I had no control over my time. No control over my goodbye to the city. Alone in the shop, lying on the table, I felt like the layers I had built up on my trip were peeling away and I was exposed around a man I did not trust. At the end, it felt like there was this thing on me I did not totally understand. It was beautiful, but it didn’t feel right. It was what I wanted, but it wasn’t. I cried on the bike-ride home. The next morning I was gone.
Now, almost a year and half later, I feel a little differently about the whole thing. Humans have a tendency to romanticize things: places, moments, meanings, etc. It is easy to get caught up in beauty and projections of perfection. But things are not always what they seem. To me, this tattoo is Amsterdam. Beautiful on the outside, but full of hidden pain and ugliness. My time there, while incredible and life-changing, also opened my eyes to the still present and disgusting racism and inequality in Europe. It was a summer of comprehending and taking in a city that I came to realize was far from everything I had dreamed it to be. That is not to say that I have not grown to love this thing on my body forever. It is a constant reminder to me of the both the good and the bad and the balance that we all find between the two in our lives. Amsterdam was all of those things, the best time of my life and also the saddest, and all of that is a part of me too.
Senior majoring in Visual Communication Design and minoring in CHID. Lover of dogs, overalls, and the ocean. Passionate about ethical design, social justice, and creating and participating in vulnerable spaces.
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