When the reminder is permanent, I can’t take it off.
I was assaulted by my tattoo artist, and now I have to look at their work on my body every day.
That’s the part people don’t really understand. It’s not just something that happened and ended. It didn’t stay in that room. It followed me home. It’s in the mirror. It’s in photos. It’s there when I’m just trying to exist normally.
People compliment the tattoo sometimes, and I don’t even know how to respond. Because to them it’s just art, but to me it’s tied to someone who crossed a line I can’t undo. There’s no separating it completely, no matter how much I try.
Some days I can ignore it. Other days it hits me out of nowhere and I feel stuck in it again. It’s exhausting having something permanent linked to a moment I didn’t choose.
I keep trying to take that control back, telling myself it’s my body and not theirs. But it’s not a switch I can flip. It’s something I have to work through over and over.
I don’t really have a clean way to wrap this up. Just that this is what it looks like for me right now and I can’t stop remembering it because it’s stuck on my body.