When I tell people that I got my tattoo in my first year of college they give me a certain look. There is that thought that the first year of college is where you experiment, make impulse decisions and suffer numerous mistakes. While all of those are most certainly true, there is nothing experimental, impulsive nor accidental about the ink on my wrist. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong about getting a tattoo in such a manner, the body is a temple over which its owner has complete domain, but that just isn't me.
But a lot did happen to me my first year of college: I was admitted to the hospital twice, ran away from home and lost my best friend to suicide. It would be this last event that would change my life forever.
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Matt and I met during our freshman year of high school and ever since that moment I knew that he was going to be one of my best friends in my life. He was a true friend in every aspect of the word. The most important take away I got from my relationship with Matt is that he taught me to be true to myself and myself only. In high school, you tend to worry about the little stuff: test grades, GPA, and filling up your college resume. When it comes to down to it, all these obligations end up writing your story rather than the other way around. The things that you do should help shape your story, not you having to shape your story around the things that you do. I took this into Bucknell where I constantly reminded myself of Matt's message because he wasn't around to remind me himself.
It would turn out that after I got to college I would never have him around to tell me these things again. In October of 2015, Matt took his life.
When this happened it hit me hard, Matt had given me advice that I took to heart and apply to most everything I do. Now he isn't around to remind me to write my own story. This is where my tattoo idea came to me. My tattoo is small and simple, it is a heart outline with a semi - colon making up half of the heart. For those of you that don't know, the semi - colon is a punctuation used in the middle of a sentence to signify where the writer could have ended it but continued. Semi - colons are some of the least used punctuation marks in writing; it takes courage to keep going.
Matt taught me that I am the writer of my own story, that when things seem like they are coming to a close all it takes is a semi - colon and some heart to keep on going. I am reminded of this every time I look down at my wrist. It is a silent reminder of Matt's gift to me, something that I will never forget.
