Starting to get tattoos was more than just changing my appearance; it was crossing a portal within myself. As if, by marking my skin, I was finally taking ownership of my own existence. I always said that knowledge and tattoos are something no one can take away from you. Life had stripped me of so many layers of who I was that I felt a silent urgency to reclaim something that was uniquely mine. I started tattooing as someone reclaiming territory. Not out of rebellion, but out of reconnection. Each stroke was a way of saying: I'm still here. I still am. It wasn't about having something that no one could take away. It was about choosing something that was exclusively mine, a decision born from my desire, my conscience, my history; the tattoo reminded me that I hadn't disappeared. I still inhabited my body. I still chose. And, at that moment, marking my skin was also marking a return to myself. About being. A tattoo is a gesture of permanence in the ephemeral. It's saying: I was here. I felt it. It passed through me. My body ceased to be just matter and became a narrative. Each tattoo is an attempt to give form to the invisible, a fragment of my journey, giving space to new versions of myself. They are affirmations of existence, of identity. I see photos of myself without tattoos and I almost don't recognize myself. As if the most honest layer of me is missing, as if the courage to inscribe myself in my own time is lacking. Today I inhabit my body with more awareness; it's not just what I carry, it's what I write, my skin carries my questions, my ruptures, my reconstructions. Tattooing is, for me, an intimate ritual of presence. It's accepting that I am a process, but also a mark. I am passage, but also memory. "And when I get old?" they ask me... I will be an old woman with tattoos. With skin marked by time and courage, wrinkles mixed with ink, memory upon memory. Because, in the end, growing old with tattoos is just continuing to be faithful to the story I chose to write on myself. #tattoo