A lot of people have tattoos with special meanings, whether it’s for a spouse, the loss of a loved one or even a beloved pet, tattoos are usually symbolic of something that is important to us.
Bekah Miles is a college student who struggles with depression. She didn’t know how to ask for help with the mental illness that was consuming her life and could not put into words what was happening with her.
“I felt very vulnerable” Bekah says, “because I didn’t want to face the fact that there was something wrong with me.”
When Bekah decided she wanted to get a tattoo, she knew she wanted to get something that represented what she was going through with her depression.
While looking on Pinterest, she found an ambigram—an image whose elements retain meaning when viewed from a different perspective—that perfectly embodied how she felt.
When you first look at the image it reads “I’m fine,” something most people say when you ask them how they are, whether they’re fine or not, but when you look at the tattoo from another angle it reads “save me.”
For Bekah, this image represented what she was going through with her depression. While she may have appeared “fine” on the surface, what was going on underneath was anything but.
The tattoo has opened the door for Bekah to talk about her illness. She posted a picture of her new tattoo with its hidden message online and the image and her story went viral.
She says she got the tattoo because she didn’t want to be afraid of talking about her depression anymore.
And that’s exactly what’s happened for her.
Getting this tattoo has opened the door for Bekah to being able to talk about her depression with others who struggle with it as well.
At first, she says, she didn’t want the attention the tattoo was bringing her.
“I don’t know if I ever wanted to be known,” says Bekah. “I didn’t want a bunch of attention—especially on campus.”
When she was first diagnosed with depression Bekah felt very alone and like nothing was going right, but getting this tattoo has changed her perspective entirely.
Click here to watch this video about Bekah’s amazing journey and her amazing tattoo that is being used to raise awareness about mental illness:
