I like the lantern fish! I'm sure that there are other people out there who like you, still get meaning from tattoos they've gotten at different points in their lives, even after those circumstances have changed for whatever reason.

What's interesting to me about tattoos is that they're part of this class of objects that are totemic for personal reasons but that they make certain people so very uncomfortable. I suppose that the object is in the skin of the bearer, makes it more intimate in an obvious way that some might feel uncomfortable with seeing. And yet, people have similar objects in their bedrooms or homes or wherever and no one really gives it much thought. For example, for years I had a stethoscope hanging on a peg in my room, which my then-girlfriend asked about. She'd expected that I had it since I might have wanted to be a doctor at some point or other and so was curious about it. When I told her I had it because it was the stethoscope that had been used to pronounce my grandmother dead with, she became a bit uncomfortable with it.