![]() It was a wonderful surprise to discover that they would not be out of place amongst their modern counterparts. Warm, genuine, accepting of and attentive to each other, a wide range of personalities and dispositions that nevertheless got on and functioned together as a society, in the face of environmental and emotional extremes … I needed to know such people were possible, and clung to them as an ideal. One of the main things that attracted me to the Terra Nova story, and has kept me committed to it for so long, was how wonderful the people were – far outside what I had come to expect from humanity. In my first days there, my supervisor joked that if you shake the world, all the best people end up at the bottom the remainder of my time there proved how right she was. It turned out that the best thing about McMurdo was, in fact, those very people I had been afraid of. Not knowing who ‘herself’ was, I took this with a grain of salt, but it was an encouraging answer nonetheless. She responded that, speaking purely from her own experience, she had never felt more comfortable being herself than when she was at McMurdo. When I was shortlisted for the placement, the person handling the admin briefed me about the process and asked me if I had any further questions, and I raised this concern. I don’t know how to deflect the ire of people who’ve taken a set against me – and, for whatever reason, I tend to rub people in the States the wrong way. Sure, the continent wants to kill you, and every way of getting to and around it comes with risk of serious accident, but the only thing I was actually afraid of was finding myself in a stressful social situation and not having any recourse to escape. Whether it was school or work, a recurring motif in my life is that I do not do well in a big box full of Americans, and that is, almost literally, exactly what McMurdo is. My biggest anxiety about going to McMurdo was the human factor. And like, anything that has anything to do with something big and exciting, I'm ruining.I may not have used my sketchbook as much as I thought I would, with regard to locations, but I did fill a few pages with one of my favourite pastimes back in The World: people sketching. My body is destroying it's self and I don't know what to do. But you know, that's okay, it's not like my mom and I challenged each other not to pick at our nails so we could get a manicure for the first time ever. So maybe because I couldn't pick my toenails I just reached for what was available. I can't seem to leave my toenails alone though. I'm gonna start moving to my head? And tonight I was watching a movie and I look down and my thumb is bleeding? And I've been incredibly good at not picking my fingernails. Gonna have more urges to pull out hair, but if I pull out all my little hairs. I also think I might be developing hair pulling? Like, I kinda have a new urge to pull out all my leg hairs. But you know, that's okay, it's not like my broken out face is gonna be on my learners permit or anything. Those little bumps you get that are like, permanent goose bumps? Yeah, those. My face is incredibly broken out, like, I counted over a dozen spots just on one side of my forehead, up into my hair line. Okay so, I'm kinda stressed out right now. And this I the start of my first, beautiful, and purposeful scar. With this bandaid tattoo I want to mentally address all of those things and help myself realize that scars are okay. And I've struggled with my self image because of the amount of scars I have dotting a large portion of my body. This past year I've lost two friends who left gigantic wounds on my heart. The beginning of highschool I developed dermatilomanina, and I've used many bandaids because of that over the course of 4+ years. I had and emergency appendectomy when I was 13, and they put bright pink bandaids over my three tiny incisions. I used to scream "I need a bandaid!" Any time I got hurt. I was (and still am) extremely clumsy and prone to hurting me self (I'm currently in bed because of a twisted ankle) so bandaids were a common accessory while I was little. I know my family is going to laugh when they find out I'm not going to get a mountain range on my wrist (I've mentioned getting that before), but this means so much more to me. 29th) and I've finally decided what I'm going to get. My parents have approved of me getting one before I turn 19 (Nov. I'm so excited and nervous at the same time. Dear tumblr, I'm about to get my first tattoo. ![]()
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