Photo: Liam Payne/Instagram

In an Instagram photo posted to Liam Payne’s account on March 9, the pop star showed off a new tattoo of his birth year inked on his arm, as part of his growing sleeve. Payne’s tattoo features the year “1993” inked vertically on the back of his left arm in heavily shadowed white letters, filling in the space around his family crest tattoo. The singer captioned the Instagram photo simply “1993,” with a copyright symbol, effectively confirming the meaning behind the ink.

Born in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England, Payne was quite ill as a young child, and he endured several years of surgeries and hospital visits from age zero to four, due to a dysfunctional kidney. He also revealed in the One Direction book Dare to Dream – Life as One Direction that when he was born, he was “effectively dead.” Payne may have gotten a rough start in life, but that all changed when, in 2010, he auditioned for The X-Factor for the second time, and scored a spot in the five-piece boy band One Direction, which quickly became a hugely successful endeavor.