I've always wanted a lip ring. Always. As a kid I used to glue earrings to the bottom of my lip. Even as recently as last year I used those magnetic earrings, you know? They didn't stay in very long... my lips are kind of big... but you get the idea. I started placing a small hoop earring on the bottom left part of my lip for a while, that fooled a lot of people... until I started talking that is. Long story short, I decided that I was going to go ahead and get my lip done while I'm still young.
At A Glance Author Lauren Contact Lauren@bme.anon When Six months ago Artist Me myself and I Studio My dorm room Location Grantham, PA I asked my mom about getting it done, and she basically broke down. Cried, talked about her broken heart and how bad it'd hurt if I went through with it- the whole mom routine. While I did have a great deal of love and sympathy in my heart for her, I suppose it wasn't enough. I made plans to get it done anyway. I rounded up my two best friends, headed out to Snakeman's in Frederick, and left with a beautiful, shiny... nose stud. I couldn't do it. Something about the woman that gave birth to me crying, kind of a buzz kill. This was over J-term semester, which is a time in January where some people take one course for hours every day of the week to kick out a credit in one month instead of a whole semester. Yeah I decided that wasn't for me and stayed home. But alas, J-Term ended and the spring semester began, and I left my home in Maryland to return to school in Pennsylvania.
I got a lot of great compliments on my nose ring and a tattoo that I'd also gotten done at Snakeman's a little bit after Christmas. This only encouraged me more to get my lip pierced. Being away from home helped to fade the images my mother had placed in my mind- her tears, her broken heart, her life crumbling into nothing- and I had nothing stopping me from going ahead and doing what I wanted to do. Except for the idea that I was a poor college student that didn't have 50 dollars to blow on getting a hole put in her face. What's a girl to do? I began spending hours researching the anatomy of the human face. My mother always said that getting a lip piercing is very dangerous because of the veins and nerves and whatnot in the human face, and I wanted text book evidence that this was the case. After reassuring myself that no real damage could really be done if I acted carefully, I got on this site and looked up the stories of other people that had pierced themselves. I found one where this guy pierced his with a safety pin and hit a vein or something and the area he hit turned black and swelled up... that terrified me enough to at least wait another day.
!! Anyone who decides to make an example of what I did next is acting under thier own will, I'm not saying what I did was a good idea. Actually it was a horrible one. !!
About two days passed and I decided that I'd just go through with it. This is what I wanted and I was going to do it. I went into my sewing kit and found a needle used for sewing machines. The hole is on the pointed side as opposed to the dull side, so it's almost like a... I forget what it's called but the idea of a needle having a hole in it or being hallow makes the piercing less painful and less likely to keloid. I put on latex gloves and held the needle over a flame for about a minute, then wiped it down with alcohol. I marked the insertion and exit place for the piercing with a liquid eyeliner pencil. After it dried, I began the piercing process. I pushed hard on the enter point I had drawn inside my lip and could actually hear the needle going through the soft squishy flesh. It was a little ick. The needle went through veeerrryy slowly pushing through my lip layer by layer until finally, with a stomp of my foot and one last push, it was through. No blood, not that much pain, it wasn't bad at all. I drowned the new piercing with ear-piercing antiseptic with the needle still in to take some gruesome pictures to show my friends. After messing around in that way for about 10 minutes I realized I was going to have to pull the needle out and put the ring in. That seriously took a good half hour. I had to walk to a dorm building all the way across campus to get help from a friend, and then we couldn't close the darn thing because it wasn't really a lip ring, it was a random hoop that the same friend had laying around in her room.
We finally get it in, it looks great. My lip was a little swollen the next morning but not too bad. I actually couldn't really tell it was swollen; I just thought my lip gloss was working really well and making my lip look plumper, which is always good. It's gotten minor infections a couple of times because I'm constantly taking it out and putting it back in. I think it was only in for two weeks before I had to take it out to visit my parents for the weekend. But it's almost half a year later and its still here, still doing well, and I love it. I'm so glad I did it. My parents hate it and call it a lip bugger and I usually have to take it out in front of them but I've gotten bolder and sometimes I'll just leave it in. It's too much of a hassle to take it out and put it in every two seconds. Because I've had to take it out so often however I've lost all of my lip rings so right now I use a barbell that my brother got when he got his ear pierced. And just 2 days ago I lost one end of it so I keep it secured with an earring catch. I really need to get a job...