Bad Romance

Jason

Bad Romance seems, at first glance, to be a contradiction. Romance is a positive thing, and bad is...bad. How can a romance be bad? Is it something like the story of Romeo and Juliet, where their romance was looked down upon? Or is it darker, in the business of tasteless obsessions and addictions? Is a bad romance a romance that begins as one thing and turns into another? Can it 'go bad?'

One story in particular from my own life I can share about a bad romance is the story of my first tattoo. I have several, but the very first tattoo I got was a small, symbolic, very simple piece I had done on my ribs. It was drawn for me by a very close friend and tattooed by a friend of his, and I love it to death. It doesn't look fresh anymore, and if you look closely, you can see a spot that didn't heal quite right and is a little bit off color. But I love it. I love it because it tells a story about me.

I got the tattoo as a sort of expression of faith. At the time, I was very involved with a particular religious group and decided that getting a tattoo to represent that bond was important to me. It's easy for anyone to read this and cringe, already expecting a bad end full of regret. Well, my association with that group did end in a very nasty way, but did I ever regret the tattoo? Not for one second. It tells the story; it's a part of me, just as my time with those people is a part of me that isn't going away. The fact that the tattoo is aging and breaking down just adds to the romance, it's detail in the story. Just as the ruins of architecture in Greece tell the stories of time gone by, my tattoos tell my stories. Greece's relics rise out of the ground, while mine are needled into my skin.

My time with those people was some of the best of my life; the way we fell apart was very unpleasant, but that's the 'bad' in our romance. Romances, good and bad, change the people involved for the rest of their lives. It's our experiences and memories that shape us; we have to take the good with the bad.