- We can do this.
Okay.
(Tessa clapping)
Hey guys, Tessa here.
And today we need to talk about my tattoos.
So you know how you guys have been waiting for me
to do an updated tattoo tour for years now,
and I just haven't done one.
Well, this is why.
I've tried so many times to make this video
but every time I end up deleting it
because it makes me feel like an idiot.
(Tessa laughing)
It makes me feel like something's wrong with me
and I hate it.
But I'm doing it, I'm giving this video to Vegard to edit
so that it happens, so that it goes out there,
and I don't just keep putting it off.
I just wanna get it out there
so that I can move on and start to feel better
about myself and just make progress.
This is progress, this is a good thing.
It's no big deal,
I don't know why I make it such a big deal in my head.
It's fine.
I feel so bad and conflicted about my tattoos,
it is so annoying.
So I got a majority of my tattoos,
not all of them but a lot of them, most of them,
when I was in a really bad place mentally.
I used it as a way of coping with my depression,
as a way of rebelling against my brain.
As a way of fixing my problems.
It temporarily made me happy so I just kept doing it.
It became an addiction.
It was this rush of serotonin,
it made me just feel better in the moment
but it wasn't actually solving my problem at all.
And deep down I was completely miserable.
And at the time I didn't realize how this was like,
these feelings were literally bleeding into my body.
My brain now, it now associates these tattoos
with those miserable feelings.
So I can't look at my tattoos
without feeling bad about myself.
(Tessa laughing)
Love that.
It's horrible, it's the worst.
And I have tried so hard to detach
and change these feelings,
to try and change my mindset,
to try and convince myself that no,
these tattoos helped me get out of that bad place,
it's a good thing.
Even though it's associated with bad feelings,
it got me to where I am now, which is in a good place.
It's like, I've tried to convince my brain that.
I've talked about this in therapy, but I just can't do it.
It's been years now, and it's gotten to the point
where I just have to start removing them
because I still look at them and I feel bad,
so, that's a problem.
Luckily, most of the tattoos that make me feel this way
are around my ankles and my calves,
so I don't really see them that much.
It's easy for me to just hide them with clothes
and not really look at them.
But whenever I wear short skirts, or dresses, or shorts,
and I see them in pictures, it makes me feel bad.
It's so stupid.
It's like, this is all so stupid.
This is why I hate talking about this
because I feel like there's something wrong with me,
like there's something wrong with my brain.
And you know, something probably is wrong with me,
but whatever, it's fine.
I'm taking active steps toward changing that.
I'm doing something about it
instead of inwardly spiraling about it forever.
Progress.
(Tessa laughing)
Me.
The ones on my upper body do not bother me.
None of the tattoos on my hands bother me
because they're associated with good memories,
and good feelings, so they make me feel good.
Just like the tattoos that are associated
with bad memories make me feel bad,
the tattoos that are associated with good memories,
and good frames of mind make me feel good.
Like actively feel good, like actively happy,
it's a good thing.
This is the stupid part.
It's not like I don't want tattoos, or I don't like tattoos.
I love tattoos.
I want more tattoos, I want a lot of tattoos.
I want tattoo sleeves.
The tattoos themselves aren't the problem.
I love how tattoos look on people,
I love how tattoos look on me.
I don't want to remove them
because I don't like how they look.
It's like, I need to remove them
because they're triggering to me for some reason.
That's what is so freaking frustrating.
Actually, one of the most frustrating things
is that I have a couple of meaningful tattoos
around my ankles mixed in with the other ones,
but because they're so close to the other tattoos,
if I want to remove them, I need to remove all of them.
This has nothing to do with Harry Potter,
or having something Harry Potter related on my body.
I still very much love Harry Potter obviously,
and I love Harry Potter tattoos so much.
The only tattoo that I want to remove
because of Harry Potter related reasons
is my J. K. Rowling signature tattoo.
I still have very personal,
conflicted, complicated feelings
about this whole J. K. Rowling thing.
For years she was a huge hero of mine.
I bawled my eyes out when I met her,
those were genuine tears, it was a genuine reaction.
When I met her in 2018,
I was meeting the person who wrote these stories
that changed my entire life,
and introduced me to all of the people in my life
that I love.
When I think of Harry Potter I seriously get very emotional.
When I think of Harry Potter, the Harry Potter fandom,
the friends that I've met through this fandom,
how it's affected my life as a whole, all of that,
I can't even believe it, it's unreal to me,
and it makes me emotional.
And meeting her was sort of
like a full circle moment for all of those things.
So it was, it brought all of those emotions together.
This is difficult to talk about.
And you know, Harry Potter would not exist without her.
It just wouldn't.
She's the author, so none of this would happen.
None of these amazing memories,
maybe I wouldn't have met all these people, I don't know.
So that's what trips me out.
But obviously with all the things
that she's been saying recently,
like the past year with her tweets,
and her "TERF Wars" essay,
I do not agree with any of those things that she's said.
I've made a video about this, I've talked about this.
I think that what she is saying
is actively hurting the trans community.
Yeah, I've talked about this, but it still hurts.
So I can't have her signature tattooed on me,
I just can't.
It's painful kind of to look at
because I still feel weirdly betrayed by her in a way.
I don't know, I probably shouldn't have idolized her
ever in the first place.
I don't know, now I don't idolize anyone.
(Tessa laughing)
So yeah, having her signature tattooed on me
is just too much so I am going to be removing it.
But the moment that I got this tattoo is still
really special to me, and important to me,
because I got it with all of my friends.
It was a really happy moment between all of us.
But luckily I got another tattoo,
I don't know if you can see it.
I got this lumos tattoo the same night,
I got it with Brizzy, it's our matching tattoo that we have.
So this one, I have this one,
(Tessa laughing)
I'm so happy I got two tattoos that night,
oh my God I'm so happy.
Because I can still have that
really special shared memory with my friends, you know?
So yeah, that's very complicated
but I'm getting that one removed.
So yeah, all of this is very weird for me to talk about
because my tattoos are very personal to me,
getting them removed is a very personal thing.
But I felt that I needed, or I guess I didn't need to,
but I wanted to share this with you guys
because I talked about my tattoos before,
I made a whole video about it.
You guys have been asking me
to make an updated video for a long time.
So I wanted to give you an update
about what was goin' on.
The tattoos that I'm going to be removing,
I'm going to be lasering them, have like the laser removal.
I think it takes a year, or a little over a year
because I have some big spaces to cover
so it might take a little longer.
I plan on getting new tattoos
over the area where it's removed.
I'm not just gonna like have no tattoos anymore,
I plan on getting new ones to cover it.
And I also just wanna get more tattoos just in general.
Like I said, I want sleeves, I want more tattoos.
But first, before I can get any more,
I wanna fix the problem that I already have by removing
and then covering up the tattoos that are making me upset.
I have learned that I will not get a tattoo
unless I am in a good frame of mind,
unless I'm feeling happy about something,
unless it's like remembering a good memory,
or a good feeling, or a good person,
or actually no people except Joe, Moses, not Rolling.
(Tessa laughing)
I'm not getting tattoos to fix myself,
to make myself feel better,
to get myself out of a bad place,
because I know for me that that does not work.
I know it works for a lot of people and that's incredible,
but for me, for my brain, it does not work.
It makes me feel worse whenever I look at them,
so no more of that, no more.
It's not like there's no more tattoos,
I'm just removing some of them
and then I'm covering them up with other tattoos.
And eventually I will talk about my tattoos again,
I will give an updated tattoo tour when I feel comfortable,
when I've sort of moved past all of this.
But again, I'm just glad that I've talked about this
because now for me and my brain, I feel like I can move on.
So yeah, thank you guys for listening and being here,
I love you very much.
Talking to you guys does really help,
so if you wanna leave a comment,
I don't know if any of you have ever felt this way
or had a tattoo removed for a specific reason
other than like, I just don't like how it looks
'cause that's not the issue.
It's like a weird, emotional, personal thing.
So if that's happened to any of you, please comment below
so I could feel like less of a weirdo.
So yeah, I love you, I'll see you in my next video.
Stay gold star fish, bye.
♪ I see them bloom, for me and you ♪
♪ And I think to myself, what a wonderful world ♪
(upbeat music)
♪ What a wonderful world ♪