I’ve always been a staunch Republican, but if you think for one second you can use my voting record to stereotype me, you’re sorely mistaken. I’m actually a very complex person with many different sides to me, most importantly the tattoo of a gun with angel wings that covers my entire back. Who I am has nothing to do with my conservatism, and everything to do with this sick tattoo.
Like I said, the tattoo represents my top two interests – guns and God.
I love guns – shooting them at the range, hunting deer with them, generally always just holding one for protection – and I also love Christianity. I believe the first priority of anyone should be these two things and ideally nothing else, especially if that person is leading our country. If you were to define me in a couple words, those words wouldn’t be “right-winger” or “conservative,” but I could probably let “bible-thumping gun nut” slide.
In addition to my politics I’m also a mother, a runner, a traveler, a military brat, a friend, and a woman with a gigantic, two-by-one full back tattoo of a gun with angel wings flying right toward the heavens. The tattoo then extends around my ribcage to reveal God greeting the angel-gun by saying, “Welcome home, my son,” in Old English font because the gun is also an angel who is a boy. All guns are boys, and all Swiffer dusters are girls. You can put that on my grave.
But again, the reductive label of “conservatism” cannot capture the full truth of who I am. At least not in the same way my tattoo does. If you don’t want to be my friend just because I supported Bush straight through the Iraq war and still maintain an unflinching trust in the Trump administration, fine. But know that it’s because you’re failing to see me for the human being that I am outside of politics.
If only you stopped seeing the divide between conservatives and liberals as black-and-white, you’d be able to appreciate that I’m actually against building the border wall (at least until Mexico agrees to pay for it). See? I don’t blindly support everything that’s going on simply because of my party affiliation. But I would like to fill out this tattoo in the next couple of months to really bring the focus back to the angel and the gun.
Didn’t see that coming, did you? That’s because you’re busy trying to box everyone in according to their political leanings. In a way, you’re really the closed-minded one, so you know what? Have a nice life. I’m going to keep living mine the way I want, by adding tons more guns and more angels to this tattoo.
