Learning to Love My Body as a Canvas

For as long as I can remember, I loved my mother's tattoos. As a child they fascinated me, those colorful pieces of art that moved on her skin when she danced, or picked me up, or stirred something on the stove. She always seemed so happy when she was in the process of getting a new piece, and each addition to her collection seemed to represent a new piece of herself she had discovered, or something about herself she felt the need to remember.

For as long as I can remember, I had difficulty loving myself. Difficulty feeling comfortable in my skin. Frequently when at school or in public, I would feel as though my skin didn't quite fit right—uncomfortable. The same thing sometimes happened in bed at night, when my anxiety would take over my thoughts and make it difficult to sleep. As I grew older and my depression worsened with the social pressures of adolescence, I grew uncomfortable in my body in a new way—it was too large, to bulgy in certain places, not padded enough in others. As my body changed in was I viewed as undesirable, as I found myself not living up to the beauty standards I consumed ravenously in beauty magazines, I felt stuck in my skin even more.

One night when I couldn't sleep—I felt particularly disgusting and useless, and my mental health was particularly low—I had an idea. I hopped out of bed, and looked around my room for a marker. Once I had found one, I began writing and drawing on my skin. I engraved "enough" along my arm, drew a sunflower around my belly bottom, vines along my arms. I wrote beautiful across my chest. I continued to carefully, and somewhat meditatively, adorn myself with my marker designs for over an hour.

When I finally looked at myself in the mirror, I felt entirely different. I felt beautiful, and bold, and brave. The simple task of focusing on drawing had calmed my mind, and something about the process of focusing on creating these beautiful things and reminders on myself had a deep effect. It felt good to see reminders to myself skin I had been so uncomfortable in, almost as though I had accepted and claimed that skin, that body, as mine by adding art to it. By taking up blank space.

I had always wanted tattoos, since I grew up around my mother's. But after that night, I wanted them even more. I wanted to experience the boldness of permanently making some sort of proclamation on my skin. I got my first my freshman year of college, a medium size, Orion constellation on my wrist. It did have some symbolic significance to me; Orion was the first constellation I could really recognize that wasn't one of the dippers, and during my times away from parents, I remember looking for Orion to feel a sense of familiarity and closeness to home.

I'm not entirely sure I would get the same tattoo today, but I don't in any way regret it. I've had many more since, and have found that all of my tattoos, even if my taste has changed, or the significance seems silly now, remind me of who I was when I got the tattoo—where I was in my life. Seeing them now can show me how much I have grown, parts of myself that I value that I have allowed to fade, or just remind me of how stupid I was.

I look at my tattoos as a living, changing story tapestry that reminds me of who I've been, what my life has been. When I am feeling out of place, or down, or that familiar feeling of distinct discomfort in my own skin that I now know as anxiety returns, seeing my tattoos reminds me that this body is mine to be in, that it has carried me through many things, and that it is beautiful in it's own, entirely unique way.