So basically in my sophomore year of high school i decided to be all rebellious and pierce everything I could. It didn't end up being much, i pierced my tongue web (DIY), my rook (at Zebra's in Berkeley), and stretched my first lobes to a 0.
At A Glance Author Barda Contact Barda@bme.anon When A week ago Artist Me Studio My lovely desk Location Bay Area, CA That last piercing is what Im here to tell you all about. I started at 16 like most people and stretched to 12 straight up, all done at home. 12 to 10 was easy,too, all i did in the smaller gauges was put multiple earrings in the holes. Safety pins, little hoops, anything.
I ran into a little stumbling block in between a 12 and 10 when i got my earrings caught in a volleyball net and almost ripped them out. The rip kinda helped, though, and ever since then my right ear has been easier to stretch than the left. I know that isn't an average occurrence, though.
Anyway I stretched to an 8, which was a little bit harder because I bought these big old horseshoes, instead of my normal unflared flesh tunnels. After that stretch healed, I started getting impatient. I had been putting about a week in between each stretch, but even that was taking too long for me. I decided to buy a 2g black acrylic taper and slipped it in during a nice hot shower. Nothing works better than the shower method, I swear. So the 2g was beautiful and I loved it, and kept it for about a month until the urge was upon me again.
I bought a 0g taper and it actually slipped in with very little pain, probably because I gave the hole so much time to heal. The zeros were great- I could put pens through them and whenever I lost an earring I could replace it with a Starbucks straw, which, oddly, is an about perfect size. I stopped at 0 because it was a nice, respectable size and wasn't too crazy so that my more elderly relatives wouldnt be too offended.
I kept my gorgeous zero's for 2 whole years. I had every kind of earring for them- flesh tunnels, tusks, plugs... but then, for my birthday, my boyfriend gave me these incredible solid tiger's eye plugs from Cold Steel on Haight St. in San Francisco. They were the most beautiful things I had ever seen, and considering my favorite stone is tiger's eye, I cherished them.
Unfortunately, when you've had one size gauge for as long as I had had them, the holes tend to get pretty loose. A few months later, one of the earrings fell out while I was on MUNI...I cried for an hour. A month after that, I lost the other one. Believe me, I was completely devastated- my boyfriend spent no small sum on those things. But let me get back on track-
My boyfriend, who knows absolutely nothing about stretched lobes, decided to buy me another pair of tiger's eye plugs, in the next size up because he thought they would fit better. It was sweet of him really. I even had the 00 taper for them, which I had bought on a whim years ago. But the tigers eye plugs are double flared, and I hadnt stretched in so long...
Anyway, what ended up happening was I had been wearing some wooden tusks I had bought at Hot Topic which, as odds go, are the only earrings I own which routinely irritate my ears. I had to wear them, though, because I had lost my only matching pair and hadn't been to Starbucks in awhile to get some straws. So whenever my ears get irritated they shrink in a little and the whole gets smaller. But I am a maniac and I wanted to have those plugs in so bad (they're so amazingly lovely) I put the 00 taper in my right lobe and after some white-knuckled struggling, it went in. Barely. So I tried the left lobe and alas, it was not so welcoming, and i had to utilize my hot shower and soap method just to shove it in. I left the thing in for almost two days while my left ear throbbed. Bad idea; I was just getting over a slight infection in my second lobe piercings that had swelled my lobes too much, apparently, and when I took the taper out, I discovered I'd blown out my left lobe. It was bloody and the dead tissue was starting to get pretty ugly. I had never had a blowout before, much less ever had blood when stretching. I spent a good hour disinfecting and cleaning the wound before trying to insert my old 0g tunnels. They barely fit. So I'm trying a newer tact now, just taping my old tunnels, starting with my right to give it time to heal. those double-flared tigers eye plugs will have to wait, I guess...
Anyway, the moral of my story is don't rush into things and be careful. Listen to your body. I didn't listen to mine for a whole day while my blownout lobe was throbbing; I thought I could take the pain, because I have a high pain tolerance. But listen to your body and be careful, and above all move slow, or you'll regret it later.