I am a military brat living overseas, and it's been a little over a year now. I live in England, on RAF Lakenheath and it was a huge culture shock moving here. The food, the people, the customs, everything is alot different. We moved here January of last year and are just now getting an actual house off of the base to live in. The houses here are really small, and we are a family of four. It's not fun. My Dad has many tattoos, and a few piercings, my mom also but we are planning on getting our first tattoos together this summer.
At A Glance Author Ali_b007 Contact Ali_b007@bme.anon When Three months ago Studio Under The Skin Location Swaffham, England For my fifteenth birthday I decided I wanted my navel pierced, the only problem is most places won't pierce you unless you are sixteen, sometimes eighteen. We quickly forgot that problem and found a place in Swaffham, which was a little ways away and a very long car drive. The original place we were going to have it done was in Newmarket, but when we got to Swaffham the tattoo and piercing parlor had just opened that week and were doing an "All Piercings for 10 Pounds" special, which is the equivilant to about 20 american dollars. I know piercings are expensive here, but to put that expense in pounds is double because of the exchange rate, so it makes it difficult to shop or live out on the economy.
We stumbled across Swaffham on an outing, my father's friend had referred the little town as having an interesting market with an auction. These all turned out very interesting seeing the people trying to auction off a lot of junk. So what happened to start out as an outing for my birthday before my piercing, became where I was to get my piercing done. The man who own the shop is also the tattoo artist and he will be doing my foot piece, to be added on here later.
So when we found this new little parlor, I started to psyche myself out, this was my first piercing with a needle. My adrenaline was through the roof, and I felt like my stomach had come up through my throat. At the same time I was excited, because I wanted this done so badly. When the man who did my piercing said my name my stomach did a huge backflip. In the room he had me doing breathing excercises because I must have looked scared, and they didn't let my mother come with me so I was all on my own. The piercing artist was extremely friendly, and had a huge gauge in his toungue so I couldn't understand everything he said, I only caught every other word which humurously aided in my growing state of nervousness.
Finally he showed me the needle, and explained what he was going to do. I layed back after having relaxed alot and just let him do it, surprisingly it was more of an exciting feeling than pain. I take pain very well, so I may just be a freak, but I thought it was the coolest feeling. After that the people who all worked at the parlor told me happy birthday and my Mom went in her for tragus and antitragus piercings! Her piercings I might add went extremely well, and she loves them. After having them done I had to re-gauge her cartilage piercing because she put bigger gauges in all her other piercings!
Now I've had it for about three month, and I've had a few complications with it. I am a gymnast and I happened to try and tear it out on the uneven bars, but luckily it didn't. It made it look a bit sickly for the next two weeks and was incredibly sore. The soreness bothers me, and it's hard to wear tight clothes because it rubs and pulls on the top ball of my bar. We went to Grin N Wear It to get some navel wash and that seems to be helping alot with the healing process.
I've changed my bar out a total of around three times, and as it seems to heal more it seems like the bar doesn't want to go through the top, so I have just left a fairly normal bar in with no dangling bits, so hopefully it heals all through within the next three months for cheer season. The dangling bars are just alot heavier and seem to pull down the top part of the piercing, which is somewhat painful. Plus, the constant changing of the bar irritates it and I get clear liquid coming from it, which is not cool. I've only had it bleed once, and that was when I caught it on the bar. Other than that it's been a perfect little piercing! : )