Taylor White was only 21 when her face was tattooed with obscenities against her will, leaving her with no other option than to cover up the unsightly markings with dark, black ink.
Now, more than a decade later, the US woman is finally removing her unsightly face tattoo with the help of a generous stranger, Karridy Askenasy, who runs the popular TikTok account TheDadBot.
White, who formerly worked in the body-modification industry, is currently studying psychology in a bid to move into the mental health field – but said her face tattoo became an obstacle when trying to land a job.
“I’ve tried applying for jobs in the mental health care field just as an advocate,” White, who has bipolar 2 disorder, told The New York Post.
“I understand that my appearance is quite different, and could maybe jar someone that has their own condition.”
When she was a young woman, her face tattoo journey began as thin lines on either side of her face connecting her eyes to her temples. It was “war paint,” she said, which White inked herself during a period of “mania” while working at a tattoo shop in an attempt to prove herself as an artist.
At the time, White, now 37, married a member of the US military, who later divorced her for a woman he met in Iraq, leaving White homeless and sleeping on the couch of the tattoo parlour.
It was then that she met her next boyfriend, who she believed was a “great guy”, but said he turned out to be physically and sexually “abusive”.
On the night of her 21st birthday, he took her out to a local bar to get drunk for the first time, but unbeknown to her, he and his pals allegedly had more sinister plans in mind.
The man, whose identity she concealed, brought White back to a hotel room – and that’s all she remembers until the following morning.
When she woke up, physical symptoms led her to believe she was assaulted against her will, and her face was in pain. After looking in the mirror, she discovered “really horrible things” permanently inked into her face, which she declined to detail, due to their horrific nature.
Upon returning to the tattoo shop for work weeks later after being holed up inside waiting for the tattoos to heal, her boss was taken aback by the ink that peeked out from heavy concealer.
“He said, ‘You you can’t live like this,’ ” she said, explaining he offered to “black it out” so she could “live a normal life”.
Despite taking him up on his offer in 2008, she has experienced anything but a normal life, being constantly rejected for jobs – that is, until her chance meeting with Askenasy online.
The pair met after White began sharing her life journey on TikTok, where she now boasts 22,000 followers, in an attempt to destigmatise mental illness.
“I wish when I was younger, that someone had told me it’s OK to not be OK, and if you need help, ask for it,” said White, who just completed her bachelor’s degree and is working towards a doctorate in psychology.
But in order to help others, White needed some help herself.
Askenasy stumbled upon one of White’s TikTok livestreams one day and, compelled by her story, reached out and offered to front the costs for laser tattoo-removal.
“The trouble she was facing obviously had a personal effect on her,” Askenasy, who touts more than 138,000 TikTok followers, told The New York Post. “It was preventing her from doing the most good possible.”
Askenasy searched far and wide for a clinic that would take on the incredible feat of removing White’s multi-layered face ink, unsure if anyone could successfully remove the ink or if he could afford the costly procedure in full.
Finally, Removery, a laser tattoo-removal company, agreed to take on the task — and do it at no cost.
Typically, laser tattoo-removal costs thousands of dollars and can take months or years to complete in full. Given White’s dark ink, Carmen VanderHeiden Brodie, the vice president of clinical operations at Removery, estimates that it could take “upwards of two years” for her ink to disappear completely.
“It’s a gradual process, but one that yields permanent, life-changing results,” she told the publication.
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For White, she’s finally ready to abandon the lingering reminder of her painful past — so much so that she was “smiling” through her first removal session last month, despite the sensation of the laser.
“I’m not having it removed purely for cosmetic reasons,” she said. “This is really removing a part of me that I no longer represent or live in.”
This article originally appeared on the New York Post and has been reproduced here with permission
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