I grew up in a Mexican household that was extremely religious (Catholic) and have always judged and disapproved tattoos. I am also the youngest of two siblings who are ten and thirteen years apart from me. When I was a teenager, both of my siblings were already adults. During my teenage years, One Direction; the boyband that was covered in tattoos were who first sparked my interest in tattoos. My parents judged the celebrities I admired, but they didn't know them and love them as much as I did.

When you first begin high school, every teenager looks forward to the age of sixteen. This is the age when you can begin driving legally. Ever since I turned fifteen, I looked forward to turning eighteen. I am now nineteen, soon to be twenty, and I wish I could tell myself "slow down the years"...Anyways, I looked forward to turning eighteen because I had a sense that this was the age where I could create and express myself more freely.

I had cousins and other family members that had tattoos and I always admired that. My parents on the other hand, always judged that. I have never been afraid of respectfully explaining my thoughts out loud to my family, especially if it's something that I approve and support of. I grew up knowing that tattoos or any other form of "body harm" was a sin. Tattoos aren't body harm, they are painful but people get them as a personal choice... at least in the United States that I'm aware of.

My senior year of high school was the year I experienced a toxic relationship and I was at the lowest point of my life. It was. a pretty toxic year in general; lost many friends, made mistakes, was mentally abused, etc. and only looked forward to graduation. I was depressed and heartbroken in life. Flashing forward to when I had actually turned 18 after graduation, a new chapter and a new summer awaited for me before I would begin college at ASU. This was the perfect time to move on and really begin creating my life I had always dreamt of.

I had scheduled my appointment for my first tattoo two weeks after my 18th birthday. Thanks to today's technology I began to browse for tattoo ideas on Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest. (Yes, I do not own credit for most of my tattoos but I do for the first one.) I wanted my first tattoo to be very meaningful, because I knew it wouldn't be the first one, but the first of many. Although it sounds cliche; the first everything must always be special. I had done my research about some Buddhism and its teachings years back, so I knew I wanted something that meant a lot, that would also be tattooed to my soul. My tattoo artist and I sat down and designed a lotus flower and a semicolon right under it:

Photo by Nayeli Lopez

I was super nervous and somehow scared of how much it would really hurt so I chose a spot that wouldn't hurt so much. This is my tiniest tattoo, but the one with the most meaning. According to Buddhism; " Its characteristics are a perfect analogy for the human condition: even when its roots are in the dirtiest waters, the Lotus produces the most beautiful flower." The semicolon right under it, was a pretty popular symbol that people would get tattooed as a symbol of how life goes on, the sentence didn't end there.

I didn't ask for permission, but hid any sight of my left arm for weeks until my mother saw it. I was really scared that I was really violating our family values, but her reaction wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. She shook her head for a minute, but later recognized that it was my skin and hers I was "decorating". For my dad; it took him a whole year to ask me about it but still believes to this day that it is fake. My siblings didn't disapprove of it, but instead, it inspired my thirty-year-old sister to finally get a tattoo as an act of freedom. It has made me feel like the family hero until this day.

My story and my tattoos are different than everyone else's, and tattoos are in fact a controversial topic in many ways. To the older generations, they are still controversial in the workplace and are against many religions. But from my point of view; "You are the page, the ink, you're the poem."