Brave Enough To Be Bliss

Chapter 9 — Sweetest Surrender

“There are only two things on planet Earth you can control: your thoughts and your actions. That’s it. You can’t control what your parents say around the dinner table. You can’t control your boss’s attitude. You can’t control that person who left you. And when you choose to let go of what you can’t control, you’ll reduce the amount of stress in your life by refusing to carry other people’s problems. Focus on what you can control. Then go make the next best decision from there.” John Delony

On February 13, 2018, Kylee asked me to meet her and a friend at a restaurant in Waldo for brunch and to watch the KU basketball game. I was happy to do it even if she only wanted me there to pay.

She brought up the idea of getting a tattoo, which she had mentioned several times before. Prior to her discussing it, I had always said personally I would never get a tattoo; I suppose because that’s what I had heard other people in my life say. When I stopped the automatic thought, though, and really asked myself how I felt about it, I realized I didn’t have any negative feelings at all. It had simply been somet hing I heard and repeated. Kylee said we should both get one and after a couple mimosas and some discussion about what I would get, I decided, why not? And honestly, at that point, if she had said getting a tattoo on my forehead would keep her alive, I likely would have done it. Nothing meant more to me than keeping that girl with us. Plus, getting a tattoo felt sort of brave. And I was beginning to really enjoy that feeling. Kylee wanted a tattoo of Romans 8:18, “Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.” (NLT) She paraphrased it this way, “The pain you’re feeling now is nothing compared to the joy that’s coming,” which is similar to our pastor saying, “The worst thing is never the last thing.” I loved the fact she selected something so meaningful, and it sounded like it had a lot of hope in it. I was hoping all of that hope would be infused into her mind, body and soul to keep her alive. The girls looked online to see where we should go. When they named the options, I said I liked one in particular because it sounded sort of scary, so it went with the whole bravery theme. They laughed at me, but then saw it had good reviews. So that aftern oon, we went to Waldo’s Darkside Tattoo & Body Piercing.

When we arrived, I was a little disappointed to see it wasn’t scary at all. It looked like the “Darkside” was in reference to Star Wars. Regardless, we signed the forms and were ready to get our first tattoos without any reservations at all. I had decided to get a semicolon because I had searched online for something related to suicide awareness since it had a lot of significance to me from the past and present. I chose to have mine placed on the

outside of my ankle so other people could see it and if they asked what it stood for, it would give me the chance to talk about suicide and do my part to reduce the stigma. That also felt brave. Ginger had told me that courage is like a muscle: the more you use it the stronger it will become. And while I joked about the mimosas, I could have been stone cold sober and I still would

have gotten that tattoo or any other one she wanted me to, because the whole experience felt very significant.

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