A Love Letter to the Life
I’m Living
A short reflection on being read by the world before being known.
Every day feels like a painting I get to walk through, except sometimes, the frame tilts when people see me. I’ll be minding my own business, headphones in, tracing poetry in my head, when I feel it—the weight of eyes. They linger on my arms, my skin. My tattoos are like open books to strangers, and they try to read them before they ever read me.
Some look at me like I’m a wild character from a movie—the girl in a band, maybe, who spends her nights in dimly lit bars strumming an acoustic guitar. I don’t even play an instrument, unless you count the rhythm game I downloaded during lockdown. Still, I let them think their little rockstar fantasy. It’s kind of poetic, in its own way. Other times, the reaction is… different.
It’s the way someone might shift their bag a little closer, or the way their eyes turn away when I catch their gaze. Fear, or maybe just discomfort. It makes me wonder how skin with colors and lines can scare someone who’s never even spoken to me. Older people sometimes look at me like I’ve wandered out of the “good girl” storyline they expected me to be in. Like I’m too loud, too visible, too something. And maybe I am. Maybe my tattoos do speak for me before I even open my mouth. But what they say isn’t what people think.
Because my tattoos don’t shout rebellion—they whisper becoming. They’re love letters to the girl I was and the woman I’m growing into. Before the ink, I felt like a sketch—lines with no shading, almost afraid to take up the page. The day I got my first tattoo, I felt like I’d added color to myself. Each one after that was another layer of courage, another truth I was ready to wear.
I love art because it changes the way you see the world. I love poetry because it changes the way you feel the world. And I love my tattoos because they’re the place where art, poetry, and myself meet.
Sure, the world still stares. Sure, it still guesses and judges and sometimes turns away. But I also believe the world can learn—that curiosity can replace fear, that beauty can be more than what we were told it should be.
I’m in my 20s, and I continue to dream. I dream of a world where women can wear their stories without being reduced to them. I dream of a world where skin is just another canvas, and where no one’s afraid to paint it with whatever makes them feel alive.
Until then, I’ll keep walking my little gallery of ink through the streets. Loud. Proud. And completely, beautifully me.