It started after my last tattoo appointment, sitting under the fluorescent buzz of the studio while the artist wiped black ink from my skin like she was cleaning blood from a wound. I remember staring at the final price more than the tattoo itself. Permanent things always cost too much. Still, I left wanting more. Another mark. Another scar dressed up as art.

One night I thought, how hard can it really be to do it yourself?

Turns out, harder than it looks.

At first I bought all the wrong needles. I learned there’s a difference between liners and shaders, between tiny groupings and fat needles meant for packing ink into flesh. I learned why Vaseline matters, why stencil paper peels at the edges if your skin sweats too much, why tattoo artists wear black gloves like funeral attire.

After a few weeks, I bought a stencil printer, and that’s when everything spiraled.

Since then I’ve given myself three and a half tattoos. Small ones mostly. I say “half” because I started a larger piece on my ankle and had to tap out halfway through. But that’s the luxury of being your own tattoo artist. You can abandon yourself halfway through and come back days later pretending nothing happened. Your skin waits for you patiently.

Sometimes I think stick-and-pokes became another distraction. Another beautiful way to avoid responsibility. Anything to escape assignments piling up on my desk, deadlines rotting quietly in the corner of my room. Some people disappear into drugs or relationships or cities. I disappear into ink. Into the ritual of setting everything up at 2 a.m. The needles laid out carefully. Low music playing in the background.

And maybe there’s something darker underneath it too.

There’s a certain comfort in controlled pain. The sharp sting of a needle over and over again until your skin goes numb and your thoughts finally quiet down. It feels dangerous without being deadly. Like taking all the chaos in your head and translating it into something visible. Something almost beautiful. A bruise with intention behind it.

But there’s another side to it that I can’t explain away with sadness or self-destruction. I genuinely love it. I love watching an image appear line by line beneath my hands. I love the intimacy of it, how tattooing someone means sitting impossibly close to them for hours.

I’ve tattooed my boyfriend. One of his friends too. Little pieces of me wandering around in other people’s bodies.

One day I’ll be covered in tattoos. Black ink climbing up my arms and wrapping around my legs, little memories and symbols stitched permanently into my skin. Some will mean everything. Some will mean nothing at all. Some will be messy, uneven, impulsive, done at two in the morning with shaky hands and music playing too loud in the background. But they’ll still belong to me.

I think that’s what I love most about it. Every tattoo feels like evidence that I was here at one point. That I survived a version of myself long enough to leave a mark behind.