You Won’t Forget This Powerful Tattoo

We’ve already tipped our hat to the uplifting trend going through the tattoo industry involving semicolon tattoos. In case you haven’t heard about this, the tattoos are being used as a way to raise awareness for people struggling with depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide. The semicolon is significant because it shows where the writer could have ended a sentence, but chose to keep going.

Robbie Campbell, a tattoo artist from Colorado, recently raised some eyebrows with his graphic take on the semicolon tattoo. As you can see from the image above, Campbell used a noose and a splatter of blood to emphasize the seriousness of suicide. After posting the image to Instagram Campbell encountered a lot of people who were offended by the ink.

“Here’s the thing peeps; suicide isn’t pretty,” Campbell eloquently explained on his Facebook. “Suicide isn’t fun and rainbows. Awareness, for some, means a never ending struggle. A fight every day to not swallow a bullet or use whatever extra electrical chords they have laying around to make a neck swing.

“So, yes, this is graphic,” Campbell continues. “Yes, this is a hard take on this semicolon craze. But it’s real life. And this semicolon hits home way better to me personally than the standard ‘;’.”

You’re not going to forget this tattoo. Every semicolon tattoo is important and memorable because of the stories attached to them. This work by Campbell takes that and builds on it by creating an image that you won’t soon forget. It’s understandable that some people were upset when they saw the tattoo; if you have been close to someone who committed suicide or experience depression yourself seeing the noose and blood could prompt some difficult thoughts and emotions. With deference and empathy to those who are troubled by the tattoo, we agree wholeheartedly with Campbell. Depression is not a thing to be taken lightly and his work not only raises awareness for the issue, but it also applies the proper amount of gravity to the situation.

Judging by comments made to his Facebook a lot of people agree with Campbell’s artistic direction on this one. Some of the commenters shared their own stories and thanked Campbell for his work. Let us know what you think of the tattoo in the poll below.