I didn’t get tattooed to be beautiful.
I got tattooed to be untouchable.
There’s a difference.
Beauty is an invitation.
Untouchable is a boundary.
And after nearly two decades of marriage that felt more like captivity, I was done being anyone’s open door.
I decided—somewhere between survival and that night he nearly erased me—that if there was going to be pain, it would be mine to choose. Not assigned. Not delivered. Not weaponized.
Chosen.
I was done being a body people practiced their cruelty on. Done being soft in ways that made me breakable. Done being the version of myself that apologized for existing.
“Women who cover themselves in tattoos are trashy,” my was-band used to say.
Was-band.
Because I was married to him.
Because I survived him.
Because he no longer gets the title or the privilege.
He wasn’t my partner. He was my warden, my critic, my undoing. And somehow, in the script I was handed, he was also supposed to be my biggest fan.
Funny how that works.
He permitted a few tattoos back then—small, polite ones. Tattoos that didn’t say too much. Tattoos that behaved.
But after I left—after I got out—I didn’t ask permission anymore.
I started with a Friday the 13th flash piece: a compass rose.
Not because it was trendy.
Because I needed direction.
Because for the first time in years, I was allowed to decide where I was going. I wanted something etched into my skin that said: *you steer now*. Not him. Not fear. Not survival mode.
Later, I chose a heart with a skeleton face.
The artist hesitated. Said it was an unusual choice.
I told him, “It’s accurate.”
Because that’s what my heart looked like after years of being dismantled—still there, technically, but stripped down to bone.
I kept them hidden at first. Long sleeves. Careful angles. Respect for my parents. Protection for my professional life. Camouflage, even then.
But tattoos have a way of multiplying when they’re telling the truth.
Mine spread—across my arms, over old scars, filling in the blank spaces like a map of everything I’d survived. Not pretty. Not polished.
More like merit badges for the war I didn’t enlist in. For my undying service that nearly killed me.
Of course, people had opinions.
They always do when a woman stops asking for approval.
An elderly woman, a patron where I work, once looked at me—really looked—and said, “You’re so pretty. Why would you do that to yourself? It makes you look cheap.”
I didn’t flinch.
“Cheap?” I scoffed. “Do you know how much my skin costs???”
Because that’s the thing—people think tattoos devalue you.
They don’t see the opposite.
They don’t see the cost of reclaiming your body.
They don’t see the price of survival.
They don’t see the way ink can say *no* when your voice used to shake.
At first, I told myself the tattoos were art. Expression. Creativity. And they are.
But that’s not the whole truth.
The deeper truth came later, when I sat with it long enough to stop lying to myself.
I wasn’t just decorating my body.
I was armoring it.
Like Achilles dipped in the River Styx, I was trying to coat myself in something that would make me harder to wound. I was building a barrier—layer by layer, line by line—so no one could reach me the way he did.
A visible warning.
A silent *don’t*.
And if I’m being brutally honest?
Some of it was strategic.
I made myself into someone my ex-husband would never want again.
Not because I wasn’t worthy—but because I refused to be desirable to him.
I turned myself into a kind of modern-day warding spell. Like the old “witch marks” carved into doorways to keep evil out.
Only this time, the doorway was my body.
And the evil knew exactly what it was.
My tattoos became my language.
My camouflage.
My flak jacket.
They say what I couldn’t say back then.
They hold the parts of me that refused to die.
They remind me that I am no longer easy to reach.
And maybe that makes some people uncomfortable.
Maybe it makes me “too much.”
Too marked. Too loud. Too unwilling to soften for the sake of being liked.
Good. FINE.
Because well-behaved women don’t make history.
And women who survive?
We don’t stay untouched.
We become untouchable.
This was written by our assistant editor, Laura Moseley.
Image Source: Unsplash, Javier Contreras
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