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 Florida resident is finally removing her blackout face tattoo — what you see now was done to cover up difficult parts and memories of Taylor’s past related to the tattoos underneath — with the help of a generous stranger, Karridy Askenasy, otherwise known as TheDadBot.
The domestic violence survivor, who formerly worked in the body-modification industry and is attempting to transition into the mental health field, said her face tattoo became an obstacle for her to land a job, and she was hurt by the rejection.
“I’ve tried applying for jobs in the mental health care field just as an advocate,” White, who has bipolar 2 disorder, told The 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 parlor.
It was then that she met her next boyfriend, who she believed was a “great guy” — but said he turned out to be “abusive” both physically and sexually.
On the night of her 21st birthday, he took her out to a local bar to get drunk for the first time, but unbeknownst 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 in the empty hotel room, physical symptoms led her to believe she was assaulted against her will, and her face was in pain.
When she looked in the mirror, she saw “really horrible things” permanently inked into her face — which she declined to detail, due to how horrific they were.
Upon returning to the tattoo shop for work weeks later — she said she was holed up inside waiting for the tattoos to heal and the physical pain from her assault to subside — 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, recalling how 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.
White began to share her life journey on TikTok, where she now boasts 22,000 followers, in an attempt to de-stigmatize mental illness. The domestic violence survivor is hopeful that by sharing her story she can help others understand that those with bipolar can be very impulsive, and self-destructive and if you notice these phases in yourself or a loved one, it’s best to seek help.
“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 Post. “It was preventing her from doing the most good possible.”
From Texas, 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.
“It’s a gradual process, but one that yields permanent, life-changing results,” she told The Post in a statement.
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.
She said she looks forward to having this marking completely removed, as a purifying and healing experience that she can thank Removery and @thedadbot for.
“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.”
