I got a tattoo this week.
A fairly large one on my forearm: a black-and-grey rose and iris, an antique pocket watch set to 11:11, and a dragonfly.
I chose every part of it because it meant something to me.
What I did not realize was that all of those things apparently mean the same damn thing.
This discovery has been somewhat alarming because I am not generally known as a particularly deep person.
I mean, I am deep. But I don’t think that’s the first word anyone who knows me would use.
Nevertheless, apparently underneath the sarcasm, inappropriate jokes and general fuckery, my subconscious has been quietly working on an elaborate symbolic narrative about transformation, identity, time and the nature of existence.
Aaaand this is where I let my crazy show lol
Let me introduce you to Rose and Iris.
They were women I met in dreams.
Rose
I dreamed about Rose a while back.
The dream took place sometime in the early 1900s. When I first encountered Rose, she was a man. I was with the police, on a call to his apartment. He was not well. The police weren’t very nice to him. I took him aside and asked him is name.
‘My name is Rose’
I saw her at what felt like the lowest point of her life — deeply unhappy, unable to live as who she really was, in a time when doing so would have been extraordinarily difficult and dangerous.
Later in the dream, I saw her again.
Except this time, she was Rose.
She was living as a woman. She was beautiful. She was happy. She was completely herself.
I hugged her.
And I told her she was brave. I told her she was ahead of her time.
Then I woke up and went about my life like a normal person who had not just travelled to 1910 to emotionally support a transgender woman my brain invented 😂
Rose stuck with me. Most dreams fade, but Rose did not.
Later, when I decided I wanted flowers incorporated into my tattoo, I knew one of them had to be her.
A rose.
Which seemed straightforward enough.
Until I started reading about rose symbolism.
Roses represent beauty alongside pain — soft petals protected by thorns. They can symbolize growth, healing, transformation and new beginnings. Black roses in particular are often associated with loss, rebellion and strength through difficult times.
Oh.
Well.
That’s extremely subtle, Subconscious.
Thank you.
Iris
Then there’s Iris.
I met her in a completely different dream.
Which was ALSO set in the early 1900s.
Apparently my subconscious has a favourite historical period 🤷♀️
In this dream I had travelled back in time.
I met Iris running a little shop on a farm. She was a wife and mother and she ran the farm and shop with her family. (side note: I wanted to buy some farm raised, probably organic meat and bring it back with me – it was dirt cheap in the early 1900’s and surely free of all the crap that’s in our food now😂)
I told her I was from the future. She felt her life was boring and she wanted to come back with me. I said ok, but I warned her:
“You’re going to need to brace yourself. It’s very loud there.”
Honestly, Iris, I stand by that assessment. It’s loud here lol
So when I chose the second flower for my tattoo, I chose an Iris.
Again, I didn’t choose it because I’d researched iris symbolism. I chose it because Iris was her.
Then I looked up what an iris represents.
Wisdom. Understanding. Experience.
Okay. Fine.
But then I learned that the flower takes its name from Iris, the Greek goddess of the rainbow — a messenger who travelled between realms, the rainbow itself representing a bridge between heaven and earth.
A woman moving between worlds.
For my dream woman who literally travelled between worlds with me.
What’s wild to me, these ladies presented their names to me in my dream; I did not name them.
At this point I would like to formally request that my subconscious calm the fuck down.
Then We Have the Watch
The tattoo also has an antique pocket watch.
That part already made sense to me. On the surface, time is precious, I desire to live on my own time, blah blah blah.
And both Rose and Iris belonged to another time.
Time. Pocket watch. Done.
Then, while my tattoo artist was drawing the piece directly onto my arm, she asked what time I wanted the watch set to.
This was a problem because I had given it approximately zero thought.
Originally I wanted 8:80 (because another dream)
But alas, 8:80 does not exist on a clock (which was exactly the point but how you gonna put that on a clock face)
So she asked what I wanted instead.
“Oh God. I don’t know.”
And then, without thinking:
11:11.
Sure. Perfect. Let’s do that. That’s a thing 🤷♀️
I did not pause to contemplate the spiritual significance of 11:11. I did not Google symbolic numbers. There was no meditative journey.
She asked me a question and I panicked.
And now 11:11 is permanently tattooed on my body.
It wasn’t until later that I really thought about what I’d chosen.
11:11 is commonly associated with synchronicity — meaningful coincidences, intuition, alignment, those weird little moments when unrelated things seem to click together so perfectly that you briefly wonder whether the universe is fucking with you.
Which is an interesting choice for a watch surrounded by two flowers named for women my subconscious introduced to me across time, in dreams.
Cool cool cool.
Oh Right. The Dragonfly.
There’s also a dragonfly.
Guess what dragonflies symbolize.
Go ahead.
I’ll wait.
Transformation.
Of course they do.
Change. Adaptability. Growth. Self-realization. Moving from one state of being into another.
Because apparently Rose, Iris, the time-travelling pocket watch and 11:11 weren’t enough. My subconscious needed to add a visual footnote saying:
IN CASE YOU MISSED THE THEME, KIRSTY.
And that’s when this stopped being a collection of things I liked and started feeling like something else entirely.
Rose: transformation, courage, rebellion and becoming who you really are.
Iris: wisdom, understanding and movement between worlds.
The pocket watch: time. Past and present.
11:11: synchronicity. Intuition. Meaningful coincidence.
The dragonfly: transformation and change.
And I planned almost none of that symbolism consciously.
I didn’t sit down and say, “I’d like to create a deeply personal visual representation of transformation and the passage of time.”
Jesus Christ. Can you imagine me saying that?
I chose things that felt right.
The meaning came afterward.
And that’s the part I can’t quite shake.
Maybe My Brain Knew Before I Did
There is, of course, a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this.
Brains are weird.
We absorb information constantly. We remember things we don’t remember learning. We make associations below the level of conscious thought. We are extraordinarily good at finding patterns and creating meaning from them.
So maybe somewhere along the way I learned what roses and irises and dragonflies symbolize. Maybe those ideas got tucked away somewhere and resurfaced years later without me knowing why.
Maybe 11:11 was just the first number that popped into my head.
Maybe these are all coincidences that became meaningful because I noticed them.
That’s entirely possible.
But I also don’t think everything meaningful needs to be scientifically inexplicable in order to matter.
Sometimes something can just feel a little magical.
And this does.
Especially because of when I chose to put it on my body.
I’ve spent a lot of years being a lot of things to a lot of people.
I’ve survived things. Carried things. Fixed things. Managed things. Raised people. Led people. Worried about people.
And somewhere in all of that, parts of me got quieter.
Lately, though, I’ve had this little uprising.
A very distinct:
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE?
Apparently the answer was: maybe a little.
So here she is.
She’s a little older. She’s got grey hair now. She’s tired. Her back hurts more than it used to.
But she’s still here.
So maybe this tattoo is about transformation.
Maybe it’s about time.
Maybe it’s about all the different versions of ourselves we become and leave behind and somehow carry with us anyway.
Maybe it’s about crossing from one version of your life into another.
Maybe it’s about finding your way back to yourself.
Maybe it’s witchcraft or the sprits of my ancestors 😂
I don’t know.
I just know that Rose and Iris are on my arm now.
The dragonfly is there.
The clock says 11:11.
And somehow, without really meaning to, I ended up permanently wearing a story about becoming— or maybe remembering — who I am.
Which is surprisingly deep for someone who ordinarily does not admit to even having feelings lol
Kirsty, Unhinged 