Amber Luke is 24 but she already has hundreds of tattoos, covering her from head to toe, costing around $40,000 (£31,000).
The Australian woman says that she has struggled with her mental health for years but tattooing her body has helped her learn to love herself.
She says that getting her eyeballs inked brought her the most happiness, even though it was dangerous, painful and left her temporarily blind.
She said: ‘My eyeballs caused me the most immense pain I’ve endured so far, but they’re worth it!
‘Every morning when I wake up and look at my eyeballs, it makes me happy because blue is my absolute favourite colour.’
She was unable to see for three weeks as she says the artist went too deep into her eyeball.
‘I can’t even begin to describe to you what the feeling was like, the best thing I can give you is once the eyeball was penetrated with the ink, it felt like [the tattoo artist] grabbed 10 shards of glass and rubbed it in my eye,’ she said.
‘That happened four times per eye, that was pretty brutal. Unfortunately, my artist went too deep into my eyeball.
‘If your eyeball procedure is done correctly, you’re not supposed to go blind at all.’
She got her first tattoo at 16, but started to get her body covered when she turned 20.
Now she has a number of face tattoos, eyeball colouring, she’s had her tongue split and had a silicone implant in her eye to look like a ‘pixie’.
She’s also had a boob job, cheek and lip fillers and pointed implants placed in her ears.
She said: ‘My passion developed when I was 20 years old, I started to get more heavily tattooed.
‘The feeling I got from getting tattooed was like no other I had experienced – I literally felt the negative energy disperse from my body, minute by minute.’
Throughout her lift, she struggled with her mental health and she said that her tattoos have helped her deal with that.
She said: ‘My mother worked her hardest all the time and gave me everything I needed. I was extremely lonely though.
‘I’m an only child, and because my mother worked so many hours – dad wasn’t really in the picture – I hardly got to see her.
‘And, over time, I developed an immense desire to never be alone.
‘Depression and anxiety developed at age 15, Borderline Personality Disorder with Schizophrenic traits came a little bit later on.
‘I’ve had, on record, 15 suicide attempts.’
She works as an apprentice tattooist while studying as a traffic controller, and now she feels better about how she looks.
She said: ‘I decided I wanted to stop hating myself at age 20.
‘The hatred I harboured in my heart for my image was relentlessly brutal.
‘My depression played a huge part in it, but my perspective of myself was shunned so much that I would avoid leaving the house for weeks at a time.’
But she has no plans to stop her body modifications and she enjoys sharing pictures of them on her Instagram, where she currently has over 58,000 followers.
She said: ‘The support I receive online is phenomenal. And people are quite open-minded these days.
‘People are very quick to look at someone and profile them.
‘We should all try and take a step back and wonder how creative and passionate that person must be to express themselves like that.
‘Instead of shunning someone, look at their beauty – I mean come on, it’s 2020.’
Need support? Contact the Samaritans
For emotional support you can call the Samaritans 24-hour helpline on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org, visit a Samaritans branch in person or go to the Samaritans website.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/24/woman-spent-30k-ink-says-eyeball-tattoos-brought-happiness-12291077/
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