So I have always been curious about body mods. I think it started when I had a babysitter when I was real young who would show up every month or so with a new piercing. First, she stretched her lobes so about a 10g (I'm just guessing because it was a long time ago), next she pierced her navel, then she got a regular center tongue piercing, then a standard lower lip ring, then finally a Madonna (the only one she still wears, we see her on occasion). The fact that she had all these piercings, and then took them out, and you couldn't tell the difference, really intrigued me. I thought, hey, maybe I can just pierce myself in my bathroom and see how it looks, and if I like it I can keep it for a little while, and if I don't, I can just take it out and nobody will know except me!
At A Glance Author anonymous When Three months ago You can see the flaws in my thought process...
So fast forward from my curiosity at about age 13-15 to about a year ago. I discover BME, and I feel like I won the lottery. Everything I had ever wanted to know was now available to me. I spent lots of time milling over photo albums, and discovered that stretching piercings was a fairly common practice. Unfortunately, I don't think I read a single experience, or else I maybe would have saved myself some trouble.
Fast forward to a couple months ago, I decide that I am finally going to pierce something. I decide to go with my lobes, seeing as they are fairly common and apparently don't hurt very much at all. I go into my bathroom, take a sewing needle, and shove it through. Little pop, but easy enough. I admire my handiwork, and get ready for the other ear. This one hurts slightly more, but nothing I can't handle. I pushed both needles all the way through, went into my mom's jewelry box, and took a couple of old studs I knew she wouldn't miss, and sit there in my room for about an hour doing nothing. After the initial rush of adrenaline wears off, they start to hurt a little bit. Obviously, they are a little red, but I don't worry. Suddenly, I hear a car in the driveway. Uh oh, there was no way my parents would feel the same way I did about my new pierced lobes. I take them out, and shake up my hair so my ears are mostly covered, and go back about my day with nobody being any the wiser.
The next day, I come home from school, and I see if I can get the studs back in my ears. After some shoving, and another pop, the right one goes through, but the left one doesn't. I figure these won't be permanent, so I don't stress and stick to just the one. Now all of a sudden, I realize that this is boring and I need to move on to bigger and better things. I start looking for bigger things to shove through the hole. I find my mom's compass (the things artists use for drawing circles) and discover that the pointy end is basically shaped exactly like a taper. In hindsight, I figure it stretched from about an 18 to a 14. Painfully, I shove it through. However, I have nothing to put in the hole so I leave it empty and go back about my day, feeling better but still not satisfied. I realize that none of these are really that significant of stretches, but for someone totally inexperienced and using crappy tools it did hurt.
Next day, I realize I need to go bigger again. The only thing I can find that is round, long, and gets bigger as you go is one of those plastic syringe things that the dentists give you to shoot water into your braces and get food out. I stick the compass point through again, and then follow it directly with the mouth syringe. I get it through to the point that the front of the hole looks pretty big, like maybe like an 8 gauge, and my ear is really hurting and luckily I realize that the skin can rip. I take it out, and end up putting the plastic inside part form a bic pen (the part that the ink is in, but the end tip so that there was no ink inside it). I was definitely impressed with this one, because it looked like a real plug, and I could see through the hole. However, all this did was once again entice me to go bigger. I take the mouth syringe out again, and cut it off at the base so that what I have essentially is a round, hollow taper that ends up about the size of a golf tee and starts at around a 14 gauge. Realizing that the hole was indeed the size of a golf tee, I make that my goal. Over the course of about an hour, I stick the plastic through millimeter by millimeter. I got to the point that the big end of the taper (about 6 gauge?) was right at the edge of the front of the totally raw, unhealed, swollen red hole. Moment of truth, I take the pointy end of a golf tee, stick it into the hollow taper/syringe thing, and push with all my strength.
It worked, unbelievably. I had started with nothing, and three days later, I had a golf tee in my ear. I didn't want to go bigger, because this was pretty big as it is and I wanted to make sure the hole shut and looked normal once it healed. I take it out, and wait for the magical healing process of the human body to take its course.
After about a week, there is a scab over the hole just like there would be after you scrape a knee or something similar.
Next week, scab falls off, but there looks like there was some definite scarring. I heard somewhere that if you massage scar tissue, that you can break it down and dissolve it eventually, so I start rubbing my right earlobe with a suspicious regularity. Luckily, my hair covered all of my ears at this time.
I think all of this happened about 3 months ago, and now, there is still a scar about the shape of a football about a quarter inch tall and an eighth of an inch wide on my earlobe. It isn't that noticeable, I have short hair now and only one person has even inquired "Did you pierce your ear?" Basically the skin is a little redder and there is a small whitish outline around the edge.
The point of this experience is don't pierce yourself if you know absolutely nothing. And don't think you can do it without it leaving behind any scarring. And also, don't stretch your own unhealed piercings with assorted household objects (how absurd does that sound? Too bad I did it...), I am lucky to have not gotten any kind of infection. Stick to the professionals, they know what they are doing and they would be more than happy to help you SAFELY achieve your body modification goals.