So at the age of 14, I desperately wanted a lip piercing, but I knew that never, in a million years, would my parents agree to this in any way, shape, or form. My father was about the strictest parent in the world. I wasn't allowed to go out with my friends more than once a month. I was limited to 3 phone calls a day, no more than 10 minutes each, and they had to be at least one hour apart. I wasn't allowed to get my hair cut, not even a trim, until I was in the 8th grade. Anyway, you get the idea. So I knew a lip piercing was out of the question. So I decided to do it myself and just hide it from them.
At A Glance Author crystallinectar Contact crystallinectar@bme.anon IAM crystallinectar When Five years ago Artist me Studio my bedroom Before you start thinking what an idiot I was, let me say that a) I didn't just want this piercing, I needed it (and if you can't understand that, I'm sorry), and b) I did it using the proper tools.
Anyway, I talked with one of my friends whose dad worked as a piercer and he managed to procure me a needle, I think it was 16g, I don't really remember. I ordered a retainer online and waited impatiently until it arrived. I'd decided on a retainer because I was working as a counselor at a summer day camp where my sister was a camper, and I was worried she would tell my parents. I honestly didn't think I'd need it to hide it from my parents at home as neither of them ever paid any real attention to me.
Finally my retainer arrived in the mail, and my friend went and had it cleaned for my by his father, under the pretense that it was for him, and not me. When I got it back from him the next day, I decided it was time.
I thought about numbing the area a little bit with ice or something, but then decided if I was going to do this myself, then I was going to do it properly and not be a baby about it, so I just marked the area (I don't remember what with, probably a marker), pulled my lip out and just went for it. It surprisingly didn't hurt at all, which wasn't what I was expecting. I slipped the retainer in, screwed it together and I was done.
I was slightly disappointed at having to wear a retainer but I figured it would be worth it. By the time my job at the camp was over, it would be time for me to change the ring anyway.
At camp, I dutifully showed off my piercing to the only other under-18 coworker I had and she loved it so much, I eventually ended up doing hers for her as well. Unlike mine however, she managed to keep hers for years to come.
I started 10th grade at the end of that summer. Being a year younger than everyone else in my grade, I often didn’t really have a lot of people to talk to. I was referred to by many of the bitchy popular girls as "the baby" (because for some idiotic reason, making fun of people is what made you "popular" at my school). I fortunately didn't have to wear a retainer in school as my school had no policies against piercings. Not because it was a particularly liberal school but because where I grew up is a little town in the middle of nowhere where things like tattoos and piercings were virtually unheard of. Thus my new piercing drew me some attention, and when people found out I had actually done it myself, I stopped being the "baby" and was afforded a new kind of respect, even if it was because people thought I was "weird" (a reputation that only grew over the years).
Eventually, driven by my father's extreme strictness and inherent distrust of me, I of course started to rebel even further. I've always found my father's lack of trust in me extremely odd. I was, or had been, up until this point, the perfect child. I never talked back, I did as I was told without complaining, I made straight As, took ever honors class there was, helped out around the house without being told to, etc. etc. So having the piercing, especially having done it myself, gave me an empowering feeling. It was the first time in my life I'd done something different, something no one expected of me. It was my little secret "fuck you" to my dad. I know this probably sounds weird in a way, but having grown up in such a strict environment, it was nice to have done something I knew wouldn't be approved of. This feeling grew and so did my "rebellion." I started sneaking out to hang out with my friends. I actually got my first boyfriend a few months later when I turned 15. (Mind you, I was strictly forbidden from dating until I turned 18). It's odd (to me anyway) that one rebellious act is what caused the death of another. While making out with my boyfriend one night, the disc on the back of my stud got caught on the wires of his braces and when he tried to jerk back, the damn thing ripped down right through my lip.
And thus was the death of my first piercing.
I don’t know for sure, but maybe this is where my desire from body modification comes. It was my first act of doing something wholly for me, the first time I'd gone against what my parents thought. It was empowering, as odd as that sounds, to have that piercing, and losing it was painful for me. I do still have to scar though, which my parents think came from my dog scratching my face.
It's not just that though. Body modification is, to me, an inherent part of who I am. I don't feel like myself without my piercings or tattoos. Every one of them means something to me, or can be traced back to a specific experience or time in my life. And I know this is something my parents would never understand. Every time I show up with a new piercing or tattoo, they just shake their heads in disappointment, not understanding that this is me, that this is who I am. And that first piercing was the first step in a journey of discovering myself, and in that way, it remains an empowering thought to me, and the scar serves as a reminder of that.