By 17, I had my first tattoo, a small elephant next to my right breast. I'm a month away from 20 now and have 10 tattoos in total, and while most are just small tribute pieces that no one sees, there are three big ones that seem to catch everyone's eye.

The first thing people notice when they see me is one of these tattoos, depending on my outfit. This usually opens up the same conversation about what they mean, when did I get it, do I have more and then, of course, they want to tell me all about themselves and what all their tattoos mean. This traps me in a conversation that I was never looking to have, which sounds mean, but this is usually at inconvenient times for me like at work or school.

The most horrifying time this happened to me I was at work, at my retail job, when an older customer grabbed me, by my wrist as I walked past him and very angrily asked why such a pretty girl like me would ever do something like that to myself? On my wrist is a map of the world, the first visible tattoo I got on my 18th birthday, it is a dedication to my grandfather who is my person.

As someone that has been battling anxiety and depression my whole life comments like that send me into a true spiral of self-doubt and stress over an interaction that the old man will never think twice about.

Halloween 2017, I started to feel extremely sick. So sick I forced my mother to drive two hours to my college, so she could take me to the doctor. As he entered the room the doctor said hi and almost immediately after, walked over to me and picked up my hand. He tried to pretend like he didn't want this to be the medical breakthrough of the century but got so excited about the red lines on both of my pinkies. It's quite an awkward conversation trying to tell a man with a medical degree that the red lines are tattoos of my grandparents' initials, not a rash. We then had to have a five-minute conversation about my tattoos and his confusion only for him to end it by announcing I had the flu.

Most recently, in my summer class, a girl who I have never spoken to before or even noticed came up to me and started asking about all my tattoos, pointing to an orchid on my shoulder in particular. If you don't struggle with anxiety it can be a weird thing to understand, I don't want complete strangers talking to me it can send me into a panic attack as I second guess everything I say and start to wonder if everyone's laughing at me. This time, in particular, it sounded like the whole class had gotten silent just to hear about my tattoos and my life, which is absolutely petrifying to me. I was just trying to talk to my teacher about what I could do to get better grades, but instead had to indulge this girl with a 10-minute conversation about tattoos.

Admiring tattoos is great, telling people their tattoos are beautiful is so sweet, it's an amazing feeling when someone properly compliments your tattoo. Grabbing, touching and interjecting yourself into someones personal space and life just because you want to know what lines on their body mean isn't OK. You wouldn't think that something so simple could cause someone, like me, so much grief but it can if done disrespectfully. So keep enjoying other peoples tattoos, but remember please don't touch the art.