It's possible to go through a large part of life and think that there's something missing when you look at yourself. In my case, I didn't think I looked bad as a kid, but my face just felt kind of incomplete.
Fortunately, that feeling started to go away when I got old enough to start growing a beard. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple for everybody.
For one Australian woman, that process of feeling complete takes a massive investment of time and money.
As The Daily Mail reported, she was diagnosed with clinical depression when she was 14-years-old.
She said, "Back when I was 14, I didn't know who I was or what I wanted from life. I was catatonic and couldn't see what was best for me. I was naive."
By the age of 16, she saw tattoos as the answer and spent the next two years getting three of them done.
As she told The Daily Mail, "It wasn't until I turned 16, I was finally able to find an outlet that released all my negative energy."
She had blue ink injected into her eyeball, which ophthalmologist Philip Rizzuto told USA Today puts people at risk of going blind and even losing their eyes entirely.
She said the 40-minute procedure was intensely painful and she went blind for three weeks after the ink was injected four times into each eye.
She said the ear procedure just involved inserting a silicone implant into the tips, but the tongue surgery left her unable to speak or eat for a week.
With every modification she makes to her body, she feels more and more like herself.
It also earned her the nickname "Blue Eyes White Dragon," from her friends because her eyes and tongue seemed very dragon-like to them.
While she didn't explicitly say they named her after this Yu-Gi-Oh card, it seems hard to believe that the similarity in names is a coincidence.
"But I've evolved myself over the years into what I want to be and look like, but in saying that, I still have a long way to go."
As she told The Daily Mail, "I now have a backbone and I can stand up for what I believe in. I also have the confidence to look however I want to."
“I'm not harming anyone in the process, I'm doing what I want to do and if it makes me get up in the morning and be a happy person, then so be it.”
To that, she said, "I'm not worried what I'm going to look like when I'm older, I understand that everyone ages and I don't think anyone will be looking too 'pretty' at 70 years old. At the end of the day, it's the only thing I can take to my grave with me."
“I gained a lot of support and positive vibes from complete strangers — there was always the few nasty opinionated ones who try to make you feel inadequate, but I never let them get to me."
In addition to completely covering herself in tattoos, she's also planning to travel to the U.S. so she can get some silver grills for her canine teeth. She wants them to look like fangs.
“If you're reading this and you have nothing nice to say? Don't say it at all. You never know what a person's going through in their personal lives, be kind.”
h/t: The Daily Mail
