A Story of Guilt, Growth, and Grace
I got the gecko inked low on my abdomen, its toes splayed like punctuation marks on a sentence I hadn’t finished writing. It started just below my ribs and ran downward, disappearing where fabric usually began. People asked why a gecko. I told them it was about balance, about clinging to walls when gravity insists you fall.
Truth was messier.
Back then, I carried my mistakes like contraband. I called them sins because that word felt heavy enough. I imagined consequences growing quietly inside me, multiplying, waiting. I used to joke—half afraid, half serious—that if I ever fell pregnant with my sins, the gecko would turn into a crocodile. Something ancient and unstoppable, a beast that would demand answers I didn’t have.
But time didn’t do what fear promised.
Seasons changed. The gecko faded a little in the sun, its green softening into something calmer. I learned that guilt doesn’t gestate the way monsters do. It lingers, sure, but it also sheds. Like skin. Like old stories.
I watched friends become parents, watched myself become steadier. I learned to sit with my choices without feeding them drama. The crocodile never came. No snapping jaws, no sudden transformation. Just a small creature that reminded me to stay present, to hold on without biting.
One morning, tying my shoes, I caught the gecko in the mirror and laughed. Not because it was silly, but because it had been faithful. It stayed what it was. A marker, not a prophecy.
Some symbols don’t evolve into threats. Some simply witness who you were, and quietly approve of who you’re becoming.
