For this week, I have to give a bit of a backstory. I've always thought tattoos were awesome for as long as I could remember. I've always planned on having my own one day, of course, what I wanted changed as I grew older as most people do change with age, but the fact that I always wanted them never changed nonetheless.

Now here's where the juicy stuff happens. Around the end of my sophomore year, I started talking to a boy and after a few weeks, we started dating. We ended up dating for a year and a half, into my senior year and his freshman year of college. Everything seemed perfect, we were everyone's idea of the perfect couple for the entirety of our relationship, to those who didn't know many of the up close and personal details. This guy seemed pretty alright, he was in the top of his class, an athlete, a church-going man (not that I'm religious, but here in the south that usually gets you bonus points with society), and he ended up going to one of the biggest colleges in the state. Anyway, the point is he seemed like a great guy and we were a cute couple that others aspired to be.

From the start, there were some red flags I should have caught on to, but of course being young and naive, I let things slide that I shouldn't have. I allowed this boy to cause me to be jealous, stressed to the point of starvation, and I let him control my life to a point that I almost lost my best friend. He would belittle me for not ever hanging out with other people, making everything about him, and at the same time would want me to spend every free minute in his presence. Anytime I would ever be out with anyone other than him, it would be a reason for a fight, and he would make sure to ruin any day I chose someone else over him. Even though he quite often would choose his friends over me and make me feel absolutely crazy for getting jealous even if he was doing things to specifically make me jealous.

If all of this wasn't bad enough, this guy I had been dating really wanted to change me and my values. He would have me go to church with him, would frequently talk about how I should become a Christian, and wanted me to change what I wanted in life. One of those things was tattoos, piercings, etc. He begged me to never defile my body with something so wrong and hideous. I understand that to a Christian, tattoos are wrong and it is not treating your body like a temple, but to beg someone to change their values because of your own beliefs is not something that anyone should want in a relationship.

In the end, of course, we ended up breaking up due to a girl he had met while off at school, but that's a story for a different day. After we had broken up, I had a lot of time to come back to who I was, and my parents had agreed to pay for my first tattoo as my 18th birthday present. I decided to get a tiara/crown as my tattoo and to make it look a little cooler, I had my artist put the tiara on a skull. I'll attach a picture at the end. The reason behind this tattoo was a sort of liberation for myself. The symbol of a crown signifies royalty and being in control. It was my way of reminding myself that for the rest of my life, I will be in control of everything. I will not let anyone change me to suit what they are looking for.

At the end of the day, if anyone ever feels the need to change who you are in order to make you who they want to be with, then you aren't who they want and nothing you do will ever be good enough. Please, never let anyone make you feel like who you are is subpar or less than or anything of the sort. You are an amazing human being and trust me, one day, much like I have, you'll find someone who has absolutely nothing you would ever ask to change, and they will feel the same about you.

PS if you ever want to talk tattoos, I'm your girl!! :)