“I was the captain of my high school’s dance team. It symbolizes growth, and every time I look down at the symbolic art on my body, I am reminded of the months when I started to want to be alive again.” A couple years later, when I turned 18, I decided to get a sage branch as my first tattoo. I began to see myself not as another broken teenage girl, but a symbol of strength and resilience. I began to fall back in love with life and living. ![]() As time went on, I grew and flourished just like the sage brushes. I was surrounded by sage during my entire stay: We used it to clean our cooking equipment, as deodorant when we had no access to a shower, and we braided crowns out of it when we felt silly and whimsical. Not many things could grow in these harsh conditions, and I think that’s why I was so drawn to the sage brushes-because they not only grew, but they flourished. For two months, I lived in freezing temperatures with only a few other girls, my two instructors, and the beautiful, snow-covered desert. Immediately following my three-week hospitalization, I enrolled in a wilderness therapy program located in southern Idaho. It was an extremely difficult and dark time in my life. I felt hopeless, lost, and completely unsure of why I was put on this earth. “When I was 16 years old, I was hospitalized for suicidal ideation. The stories-like the tattoos themselves-are all different and beautiful. Here, 19 SELF readers (of over 200 submissions) share photos of their tattoos and the stories behind them. I always want to ask, What motivated you? To put something on your body permanently, enduring what I imagine must be quite a bit of pain, and often paying a lot of money, takes a level of passion and dedication that I find fascinating. Whenever I see someone’s tattoo-whether it be big or small, and whether or not I know that person-I wonder why they got it. Is this where it should go? Is this what it should be? Is this what it would feel like? I stare down at my hands habitually and ask myself. I’ve gone through phases where I use a Sharpie to draw a shape that feels meaningful to me at any given time-an infinity symbol, a safety pin, the letter of someone’s first name-on the inside of my index finger or below the edge of my palm. ![]() I don’t have a tattoo, but I’ve always been curious about getting one.
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