My First Ink: Seki ⛩️

I always knew I'd get a tattoo. I always loved tattooed characters in my shows, loved the art, the meaning behind the symbols and the feelings attached to them, feelings so strong that you'd have them etched on your skin forever.
So yeah, I knew that sometime in life, I will get tattoos, in fact, I predicted I'd have 4-5 visits from the ink pen.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to say that I've had one of those visits and the outcome is healing nicely!

> How did you get your tattoo?

I'm like most teens where tattoos aren't allowed in their homes, it was a spur of the moment decision.
So spur and of the moment that I had to take off a loan to pay and I had to change the design because my original design was more expensive than I thought.

_{A screenshot from here.}

I so love this tattoo that's meant to symbolize a net full of fishes and even though it isn't any longer my first, it is still going to be drawn on me because of the story it symbolizes.

Yet I guess that just wasn't meant to be yet, and as it loses its spot at first, I do have a vague idea of when I'll have it on my body.

Regardless, let's talk about the image of the day.

After I saw that the net full of fishes were out of my budget, and I already had my mind locked on getting a tattoo, I had to come up with something on the spot.

Immediately, I remembered a conversation about the intricacy of my name Seki.
It's actually a cut from my surname and in the Benin language, it can mean a number of things from Son, to Market and I just recently discovered that in Kalabari, it means dance.

Now, if you didn't already know, I am an anime and low-key Japanese/Korean lover, so doing what all natural anime lovers would. I checked if my name had any Japanese meanings..

As you can see, it has quite a number of meanings, but the main one and the one which relates to the drawing is "関" meaning gate, barrier or connection.

Now, I knew about this, and I also knew about the difference between Kainji and Hiragana, where Kainji is about the ideas or meaning in the word and how hiragana is by using the sounds to draw characters like how English uses syllables in pronunciation.
So, the Seki I intended was the Kainji Character 関 for barrier, as shown by the Torii gate above it.

But yeah, I was high, was rushing cause it was late and I had to get home, so instead of Kainji, I did hiragana and now I have Seki spelt out with a Torii gate, and not the Kainji that symbolizes it😂
For the Japanese readers who may come across this, they can tell how this might be an issue because Seki in hiragana normally means seat or cough, nothing nearly as grand as a barrier or linking to the Torii gates.

Regardless though, that's just how it is, that's how I got my first Tatt, and that's the story behind the Torii gate Seki drawn just above my waistline 😂✨

_{My Instagram page.}