I’ve exorcised a number of demons through the use of ink. No surprise for a writer. But this week exorcism-by-ink took a different twist.

A couple years ago I foolishly married a person who turned out to be a liar and a cheat (and also already-married!) and unfortunately I had already let him scrawl his name across my arm with a  tattoo gun before I figured all that out. That’s right, I let him sign me. (I’m sure there’s a whole psychology-chapter in that.) The annulment erased his name from my ID and social security card, but didn’t erase it from my arm.

So… I just got some new ink. His signature has been obliterated by a lava flow, which pretty perfectly mirrors how I feel about this.

That signature was a demon-claw still snagged in my skin. Today I feel…  unsnagged.  I loosed the demon’s hold with an application of ink.

And now… I’m turning to the more difficult application of ink, writing a “Step Four” I’ve been putting off, which should be the final step of loosing that particular demon’s hold. The fact that I’ve been putting it off is proof that I haven’t finished the exorcism yet.