He has a completely black tattooed body, including his face and even his eyes. William from Oss may be an impressive appearance, but whoever knows him knows: no threat, no harsh words. Calmance, as if the storm in his life finally lay down.
“I had no choice anymore, I was gone,” says William softly, but determined. He is only 26 if he decides to completely change his life. Before the completely black bodysuit, he also had tattoos, but mainly controlled drinks and drugs.
He started drinking at the age of eleven. “I didn’t know better, my father was addicted.” He thought it was terrible and attractive at the same time: “As a child I mainly saw how cool his life was, and how free my father was. That way I naturally went the same path.”
“Drinks and drugs is the best there is, even if it breaks you.”
What started when chasing that free feeling ended in total chaos: “I became addicted. At a certain point I needed six half liters of beer to just get out of bed.”
William talks about the dark periods in his life without shame. He thinks it is important to explain how addiction feels for people who are unknown with it. “I understand that if you read this, it seems sad. But if you are addicted, using the best thing there is. Even if you know it is destroying you.” He illustrates: “Sometimes you see a fierce film, for example about heroin addiction. So intensely sad, it’s to puke. Yet, when I see such a movie, I think: I want too!”
He went to drugs, to the point that he only slept two nights a week. That no longer went: “If I continued like this, I would only live for half a year.”
He talks sober about kicking: “I had to,” he says shoulder. It draws how very familiar the drinks and drugs were: “I thought, let me just try it for a year, that sober life. If it’s nothing I will drink again.” That is now more than four years ago, since then he has been Clean. “Saying to myself that I can always start again helps. It is like a smoker who wakes up without cigarettes: then you are craving all the more, it is in your pocket, you can wait more easily.”
“People think I’m hiding behind my tattoos, but I’m just myself.”
A life without alcohol brought him another mentality: “If I had continued drinking, I would not have been there now. That ensures that I am now very open in life. I do what I want to do.”
And what he wants to do is be busy with tattoos, a love that started early. “At the age of thirteen I wanted a sleeve for my birthday,” he says laughing. “I grew up surrounded by people who were completely covered, I thought it was wonderful.” He himself saved, first flying for a pizza case, later every job to be able to pay for drinks, drugs and tattoos. “The latter brought positivity to my life.”
But the tattoos that he had all set at the time were now standing for a life that he had taken away. When he saw a documentary about someone who had his whole body black tattooed, he felt a strong fascination for the specific tattoo style called ‘Brutal Black’.
He found the man from the film – a tattoo artist – and there was immediately a click. “I trusted him so that I said,” My body is yours and start with my face. ” In five months his arms, upper body and face were completely tattooed in a black line pattern.
In the mirror he finally sees someone he can love. “Many people think that I hide behind that black. But I used to wear that mask, when I put everything away with drugs,” he says. “Now I’m myself.”
“A needle in my eyes, that was a great experience”
The second part of his story will be online on Sunday at 2 p.m. In it, William talks about tattooing his eyes and the reactions he gets from his environment to his new ‘Bodysuit’.
Watch the video that inspired William below to also take over the Brutal Black style:
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