Camila Mendes Just Revealed the Powerful Meaning Behind Her Tattoo and I’m In Tears
In this month's issue of Women's Health, Camila Mendes bared it all and came out as a survivor of sexual assault, sharing her story in the magazine's cover story.
When Camila was a freshman at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, she had a "very, very bad experience," as she describes it. "I was roofied by someone who sexually assaulted me," she said, referring to the drug Rohypnol—commonly known as "roofies" or "the date rape drug"—which causes insomnia and short-term amnesia.
After the incident, Women's Health explained, Camila "vowed that from then on, everything in her life would make her feel safe and comfortable." In her childhood, Camila moved more than 12 times before she was 18. She described this as "a bit traumatic," explaining, "you’re constantly saying goodbye to people, and you’re constantly being removed from your identity. When you start to feel like you’re connecting with a group of people, an environment, and a home—a physical home—it can be destabilizing when you’re uprooted and taken somewhere else."
Between her hectic childhood and the incident in her freshman year, it was important to Camila to find stability in adulthood. She got the words "to build a home" tattooed above her rib in cursive (which you can see under the lace on her right side in the pick above) to remind "her to strengthen both her sense of self and the environment around her," according to Women's Health.
Now, with her crazy travel schedule, the actress works hard to create habits wherever she goes, meaning she has go-to cafés and hotels in both LA and, of course, Vancouver, where she is currently filming Riverdale season four. "If you don’t have that literal box, you have to create it in your habits," she said in the interview, and while she doesn't mention her boyfriend Charles Melton, I'm sure having him around helps create comfort too.
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