After 10 ear piercings and a tongue ring, the obsession with a new piercing began. Someone suggested that they could see me with an eyebrow ring, so I immediately decided that this would be the next one. I didn't do much research, or test out what it would even look like on me, I just did it. One night, on impulse, I went to the local piercing parlor, and I slapped down some cash and sat down in the chair.
At A Glance Author Sakai Contact Sakai@bme.anon When Two years ago Studio Lefty's Salon Location Chula Vista, CA The procedure was pretty painless, perhaps because the guy was so fast in everything that he did... like he was speeding through my piercing. In some ways that can be a good thing, because its really stressful when I sit down in the chair and wait for the person to take their time opening bags and sterilize stuff. It was nice that the guy told me some interesting stories about the people he pierced, that calmed me down and probably made it easier on the both of us.
Surprisingly enough, there was very little blood, and for a big guy, right after he stuck a giant needle through my eyebrow he was pretty quick in putting on the jewelry. As I remember it, the needle hurt a little going in, but it was so fast - sometimes I think it was the mental pain of a giant needle going through my face - that made me feel pain. It wasn't as bad as one of my cartilage piercings that I had to re-pierce myself, though. While he was talking about the after care, I felt a slight throbbing, but other than that I didn't feel anything.
However my endless chain of mistake began soon after, because it was pretty late, so I just went to sleep without cleaning it, or icing it.
When I woke up, it was still pretty tender, swollen, and looked a little red, but I felt like it gave me the total edge - so I decided that the pain was worth it. I didn't want my parents to see it, so on my way out of the house, I covered it with a really cheap, really old, probably really dirty beanie. I'm sure that probably was another stupid idea, because the piercing got lots of bacteria but very little air to breathe.
It was also a bad idea that I got pierced the night before going on a huge Snow-boarding trip - with about 60 other college kids, because I never had time to clean it, ice it, self-medicate myself, because it seemed like the whole day I was in a car, sleeping. When we finally got there, my piercing was semi-crusty, and still very much sensitive to the touch and throbbing.
All my friends thought it was pretty cool, because I was the first one in the group to have a visible piercing that wasn't the ear - so I felt like the fucking shit, and let everyone look at it, and i even let one guy use his fork and play with it. Well, unfortunately it got stuck and so we had to tug it out a little - but it hurt me a lot.
For the rest of the day, it pretty much throbbed and hurt whenever the ring was pushed up or down, because when he pierced it the hoops just stayed sticking out in the middle. It was pretty painful, and I started regretting the whole thing. More importantly, I was pretty scared about going snow-boarding the next day, because I thought if i bit the snow that I would either be in a lot of pain, or could be at risk for ripping it out, getting it caught on my beanie, or something.
That night, it seemed like it was hurting more and more, and I tried to rinse it with Bactine, by just squirting a mess of it on and then rotated the hoop around. Later, I found out that I should have used a q-tip, because our hands can get pretty dirty. I fell asleep, still in pain, only to wake up - because I rolled on to my piercing and it started to bleed.
I ran to the bathroom, and I decided that I was fed up with the pain and fed up with the piercing. To make matters worse, it took me another ten to twenty minutes to try and figure out how to get it off. For some reason, I thought he screwed on the ball to my hoop, so I spent a while just trying to unscrew it, and meanwhile I was bleeding all over. I finally tried popping it off and it finally gave...but in return I felt some pretty intense pain because i practically just pulled it up and down, and jerked the piercing off.
Although I was pain free, I ended up getting a little infection, and it there was a bump where the piercing used to be. I was mad at myself for wasting the money and putting myself through it, just for me to take it out.
However, in two to three weeks, I went back and got my eyebrow ring re-pierced, only this time with a curved barbell. I think it hurt a lot more to get it re-pierced because my old piercing wasn't completely healed, and somehow that can still be sensitive.
With the bar, instead of the hoop, the healing process seemed a lot more bearable... and this time i knew that i should ice it and clean it often.
Two years later, I'm not sure if i still like it, but I'm going to keep it in anyway... I wear a different hoop, all the time, because I don't really like the look of the bar and the hoop that I was originally pierced has a tiny little ball that is a bitch to get back on. Sometimes i feel like my skin is slowly rejecting my piercing and pushing it closer to the surface, and is getting smaller - but that could be just me...