“Nervous, huh?” asks a nice woman, covered from head to toe in tattoos, as she pulls on her latex gloves.
“Not really,” I mumble, but my shaking wrist outstretched on the sterile tattoo table says otherwise. This will be my first tattoo, and in all of my daydreams and doodles in sharpie, I never thought I’d actually go through with it. I’m getting a semicolon. It’s simple and small, but to me, it means everything.
If you haven’t heard of the semicolon tattoo, let me fill you in. Project Semicolon started on social media in 2013 when Amy Bleuel wanted to raise awareness after she lost her father to suicide.
Originally a day where people would draw a semicolon on their body and post a picture online, Project Semicolon explained the significance of the symbol with this quote: “A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life.”
As more and more people began to identify with the message, it developed into a tattoo movement symbolizing love and hope for anyone struggling with mental illness. I heard about the movement late last May, and it immediately hit home.
I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). No, that doesn’t mean I have to have my pencils lined in a row or that I constantly fix tags on strangers’ shirts in the middle of class. OCD is an anxiety disorder where I have constant, recurring thoughts and use compulsions to try and control them.
I’d been working with a psychologist for about a year and thought that I had everything under control, but once I graduated high school, something snapped. I spent the whole summer before my freshman year planning everything from throw pillows down to the exact brand and scent of hand soap I would keep in my bathroom. I thought I’d relax once I got to school, but that fall, things took a turn for the worst.
I felt completely isolated. It was my first time being away from my family, and I didn’t know anyone. My roommates were all a few years older than me, so it was hard for a newbie like me to relate, and I often found myself the punch line of jokes, which were mainly directed toward my “quirks” and naivety.
My normal level of anxiety skyrocketed, and I found myself disinterested with, and even upset by, the things I usually enjoyed. I would come home from class and go straight to my bedroom where I would take a five-hour nap (despite having gone to bed at 9:00 the night before) and then do homework, stopping every few minutes to cry that I wasn’t smart enough.
I obsessed over the way I looked—my makeup had to be perfect, and my outfits had to be planned for every day of the week. I missed meals and kept losing weight, my ribs and hipbones sticking out further every day, but the body dysmorphia that developed from my specific OCD didn’t let me see that I had a problem.
I was wasting away, body and mind, but I was ashamed to admit that I needed help. My parents were spending so much money on my tuition and housing, and I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. I even kept a lot of my struggles from my psychologist because I was afraid that she’d be disappointed that after all the work we’d done, I was even worse than when we started.
I felt like I didn’t have a right to be sad. I was in college, I lived in a nice apartment, and I had a kind, accepting family. What wasn’t I happy? There were so many people—people that I knew personally, even—who had it much worse. I constantly heard the words, “just choose to be happy,” and I felt selfish when it wasn’t that easy.
Eventually, it got to the point where I knew that if I didn’t tell someone, I would never get out of it. I broke down to my parents when I came home for the weekend, and they were heartbroken that I’d been suffering on my own for so long. I was diagnosed with clinical depression, put on antidepressants, and given appointments with my psychologist on a regular basis.
It was a long, painful road paved with a lot of tears and sleepless nights, but I know now that depression doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t matter who you are or whether or not you have a good life; mental illness can affect anyone, just like any illness.
When I was finally home after a long freshman year, I found myself happy for the first time in a long time. I wanted to do something to honor my fight with depression and all the progress I’d made. When my friend sent me a link to the Project Semicolon website, I knew what I had to do.
So here I am: sitting in a tattoo parlor, biting my lip as a buzzing needle injects ink into my skin, and I can honestly say I’ve never been happier. To me, my semicolon tattoo symbolizes all that I overcame, and all that I can overcome. It is a permanent reminder that though I was in a dark place, I’m not there anymore. Things really do get better, and though mental illness isn’t gone, it doesn’t control me anymore. When I’m asked what my tattoo means, I won’t be ashamed to tell the truth: I didn’t end my sentence.