So there I was, sitting in the chair, with twenty people watching as tears poured uncontrollably down my face – and I couldn't have been happier.
At A Glance Author Skylar Contact Skylar@bme.anon IAM Skylar When A week ago Artist Myself Studio Home Location Vancouver, BC As I write this, my septum is adorned with a 00ga stainless steel tunnel. I am three-quarters of the way into my journey of a 1/2" septum.
I have previously written a septum experience, where I tell the story of my piercing, and stretching to 4ga, so I think this is a good place to start. You can read it here.
After I made it to 4ga, I was a little disappointed. When I first set my goal to that size, I thought I would be happy with it. The idea of having a medium-large sized septum was appealing for aesthetic reasons, bragging reasons and reasons of my own, but when I finally got the tunnel in, I thought "Is this it? This isn't fun like I thought it would be". At the time, I had been reading a few other BME experiences on half-inch septums, and right away I knew I wanted one. So I set my goal to 1/2" that day. I decided I would give it a few weeks to recover from my stretching from 8ga-4ga and ended up starting again about three weeks later.
Teflon Tape was my best friend, and my ally. I think I have three or four rolls of this stuff in my house. I went a little over-kill at the hardware store as I didn't want to run out, but hey, it's only 75 cents a roll, how can you go wrong.
When I began to stretch, I would go about 2-3 wraps every two days. I did this religiously for a couple weeks, and would slow down, or skip a day whenever my body told me to do so. From stretching 12ga-4ga I knew my limits, and I knew to pace myself. It took just over two weeks to hit 2ga. I realized that if I stay consistent with the wraps, and not over-do my nose when it 'felt' loose, then I could keep the same pace all the way. The soreness and pain was minimal, so I only felt the need to do 1-2 sea-salt soaks a week.
At this point in my journey, I figured out a simple trick to make the stretching easier on myself. I noticed that Teflon compresses into itself under the pressure of my septum. I devised an easy way to pre-squish the Teflon, so to speak. It's quite simple; I would do 3-4 wraps, and then with a little force, run my thumb all the way around the tape once or twice. This allowed me to get an extra 1-2 wraps on without even noticing a difference, and sped up the stretching, as I wasn't going two steps forward, one step back, or in this case, four wraps forward, two wraps back. The pain and soreness also went down when I began doing this and I think I discovered the secret to stretching.
After I hit 2ga, I continued without a break, and for the next two weeks, I stayed consistent with 4 wraps every two days. After this time, I started noticing that it was continually going in much easier than previous times, and I decided to increase to 6 wraps. This was no problem, and for the next week I stayed consistent. The soreness was about the same as it had always been, and I continued to do sea-salt soaks every few days, or when I really felt I needed to.
I was just about to hit the 0ga mark, when I discovered yet another method to help myself with the stretching. I would loop a piece of string through the eyelet, and hang little weights from it. I didn't actually have weights, so what I ended up using was my guitar Capo, with a Zippo lighter inside its clamp. The capo has a little hook on one end, and it hung perfectly, with its bend matching the contour of my chin. On average, I let it hang for about 20 minutes, and would then go to my 'Stretch-Shop' (my bathroom) and pop out the tunnel, wrap it, compress it, and pop it back in. With the weight method, I was able to get an extra couple wraps onto the jewellery every time.
I continued to do this for another week. I knew I would soon hit 00ga, so I went out to my piercer's and bought a beautiful 00 SS Tunnel.
Another week passed and I finally hit 00ga. I took it out, and compared it's size to that of my new tunnel, and it matched almost perfectly. I tried a couple times over 3 days to insert the jewellery into my septum. Each time, I failed, as I couldn't get the entire thing to line up with the hole in my nose. I was pretty disappointed, but I had an easy solution. So it was back to my piercing shop that weekend. It was a Saturday when I went, and the shop was quite busy. When I got in, I was immediately noticed by my piercer Jacob, and right away was greeted with him calling my name from across the shop. I've been pierced at NEXT! many times before, and I visit quite often. I had actually talked to him the day before, and let him know I would be coming in for a tapering. He was working the counter that day, so I waited patiently for him to finish talking with a customer, and we began chatting. He knew what I was in for, and he devilishly snuck me in front of the line. I love him. We giggled as we made our way to a chair off to the side of the store, and I let him know how much I appreciate it. "Ahh, anything for you Skylar."
I watched as he washed his hands, put on gloves, and got the taper out of its pouch. He asked me if I was ready as he was lubing up the taper. It looked mighty big, but I was so anxious to get it in, that I didn't even think about the pain. I took my Teflon covered piece out, and placed it in a plastic pouch. As he was preparing, I began to look around and noticed the store had about twenty people inside it; a girl getting tattooed to my right, and about 12 girls waiting to get pierced on my left, with some people behind me at the counter. When people started to notice what we were doing, we suddenly had an audience. The entire store watched as he slid the taper in. The girl getting tattooed had Joshua stop for a minute so she could watch. I heard the girls talking to each other about it, and I saw them all staring. I can't say I was embarrassed, I guess I like the attention. I was laughing afterwards when they kept saying "That guy is so hardcore."
He asked if I was ready to stretch, and told me to tell him as soon as I felt pressure or pain. He got nearly to the end of the taper before it actually felt uncomfortable. At this point, my eyes started to tear up in huge amounts. He slowed down, and finally got to the largest point, and let me know that it won't be stretching anymore. He did tell me that I would feel it go from taper to jewellery, and within seconds I felt it. This was the worst part. I felt the small gap between the pieces, and my eyes continued to pour. It felt like it was going in a lot slower than it actually was. Just a few more seconds of pushing, and the taper was out, and he pushed the jewellery in position. After it was done, he went to the fridge and grabbed me a bottle of orange juice, and told me to drink up. I had no problem with that, I needed it. I let him know that I would need a few minutes for my eyes to stop watering, so I sat down and talked to a girl who was working there for work expe rience. We talked about random piercing stuff, and she kept telling me how crazy I was with such a huge septum. I knew she was impressed. As we were talking, Jacob would come back and forth between the customers at the counter, and talk to us. It was fun, but I was on a time schedule, and had to get going pretty soon. About ten minutes had passed, and my eyes had stopped tearing up. So I finished my conversations, and started to leave. I said my goodbyes to all the piercers there, and left the shop. The pressure of the new jewellery was pretty strong, and for the rest of the day I was in a fair amount of pain but I guess my septum is use to it, and I ignored it most of the time.
It's been exactly one week today, and I've done a few sea salt soaks over the past 7 days. It feels better and better every day. So far, it's exceeded my expectations and I am very pleased with its size. I've had no problems so far, and I am so glad I'm this far.
I will begin stretching once again in about 6 weeks. I want to give this ample time to rest, and heal. I can't wait 'till I finally hit 1/2". It's been my dream for 4 months now, and I'm so close right now.