It’s so nice to be in a relationship where you don’t get yelled at for bringing up an insecurity, but instead you talk it out. It makes me feel safe.
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Bringing this back again to add: I’m so in love with her and she makes my life have a meaning I never knew I was missing. When you know that you can trust this person with anything, that you feel so safe and comfortable around this person to tell them things your own mom doesn’t even know, it’s just amazing. When you’re so used to being closed off, being used, being lied to, things being one sided, being second, then someone comes along and manages to break through over five years of walls….. Suddenly everything is fresh and healthy, new and wonderful. Sometimes, old souls were made to find each other.
And with her I feel like I’ve got pieces of me picked back up and healed together again when I thought they were gone forever. Like only she was meant to rearrange their order. I can’t say anything that can describe how wonderful she in, inside and out. I’m just so beyond grateful she chose me, that she loves me. I’ve never had this before.
I know I’m a mess, I know I fall apart lately, but she always helps me up. She steadies me. I’ve never known a soul as gentle as hers. I just know I’m crying as I write this because I’m super in love. And I hope she doesn’t kick my mushy ass.
2010 Me: wow I really want this fictional character to like hold my hand and kiss me and shit it’s wild
2018 Me: I want this fictional character to rip my beating heart out of my chest and eat it while fucking me. It would be romantic.
“So, if you are too tired to speak, sit next to me because I, too, am fluent in silence.”
— R. Arnold
The other day at the mall i saw a 15 year old sitting in a Claire’s piercing booth and it took every fiber in my being to not just grab her and take her to the actual, clean and sanitary and not guaranteed to fuck up your ears tattoo shop literally next door. Like I was frantic. Snakes manifested in my house
Piercing guns almost ALWAYS cause infections
They hurt more because they jam dull jewelry into your ear
Needles from a professional are designed to allow for minimum damage thus less pain.
The people working there literally have no idea what the fuck they’re doing and just guess it with a 1 hour training video vs a professional who trained under a mentor for at least a year and has a passion in the craft
They use bad metal for healings (copper, silver, etc) that can irritate ears. Surgical grade steel should be the only thing in your healing piercings
They put them on way to tight, causing swelling issues. Swelling is normal and piercings should be large enough to allow for that
They give you shit aftercare advice and cleaner (literally just buy saline solution at Spencer’s or hot topic for 8 dollars at the most and don’t touch them at all)
If done on cartilage it can LITERALLY SHATTER YOUR EARS
Please if any young girls in your family want their ears pierced take them to actual professional and don’t trust piercing guns. If a professional says your kid is too young (I.e a fucking baby) then trust their professional judgement. It costs more but you are getting essentially a art piece from a highly trained professional who knows what they’re doing vs a part time min wage employee who had 1 hour training on how to pierce ears.
I literally wrote an entire essay in college why piercing guns should be banned with pictures and my professor told me she was so interested in my topic and had no idea and even googled the topic herself out of curiosity and was horrified on the amount of damage they case
I am a licensed piercing professional and this is all sound and accurate advice. Get your piercings done by a licensed professional at a reputable shop. Not at the mall kiosk that uses piercing guns. Not by your friend who ordered a kit off of Amazon.
Association of Professional Piercers Aftercare Guide:
Y’all, we’re not just talking a bacterial infection that makes your ear hurt for a few days. People can and do get hepatitis and other blood-born viruses from improper sterilization of piercing guns.
Go to an actual piercing studio. They don’t use an alcohol wipe to clean their equipment - they use an autoclave and/or single-use sterile equipment.
Listen, kinderlach.
I had my ears pierced at Piercing Pagoda (same method as Claire’s, PP just doesn’t stock anything else) when I was five. 1994, if you want to count.
My holes are crooked. And also, THE PIERCER WENT STRAIGHT THROUGH A NERVE.
As a result, I have one hole that’s permanently, completely fucked up. It feels weird to touch. There’s a funky hard “tunnel” through the middle of the hole–aka scar tissue trying to protect the sheared nerve. I’ve had to have that hole redone three times.
Do you know when it finally took, and stopped being a weepy pus-filled mess (almost 20 years after the fact)?
If you guessed “when I let someone reopen it with a sterilized safety pin,” you are absolutely correct.
Now, to be clear, safety pins should never ever ever replace real piercing equipment. Ever. They still aren’t a safe option, and the only reason I did it was “fuck I HAVE to be wearing earrings in the show next week” combined with “but when have I ever made good decisions”. But even so, they are safer than piercing guns, provided they are properly sterilized. They’re sharp and actually pierce rather than tear. Stop and think about that: an item traditionally associated with punk metal piercings and 1950s “did it at the sleepover” piercings is safer than the option being peddled to minors.
Since my original piercing, my holes have been redone twice in one ear and three times in the other. My second set of piercings had to be done crooked on purpose. Once or twice a month I squeeze long tubes of dead skin cells and occasionally pus out of my damaged hole, regardless of whether I’ve been wearing jewelry lately (in fact wearing jewelry often causes the damaged ear to crust up the way it would if the piercing was new). I’ve had a professional piercing artist take a look at my ear, and his opinion–after sucking a breath through his teeth, you know the way people do when they’re looking at a really gross injury?–was a dubious “I might be able to help it by reopening it around a taper, but there’s really nothing you can do to fix this.” Someone who’s gone through all of the training described by OP, who’d owned his own shop for 15 years and had a fabulous reputation in the area for doing good work (I actually got referred to him by word of mouth), looked at my ear and basically said “there’s nothing that can be done.”
Please learn from my pain and my mother’s poor decision. GO TO A REPUTABLE PROFESSIONAL PIERCING ARTIST. Yes, it will cost more. Here’s what you’re paying for:
1) Their education
2) Clean, single-use (or fully re-sterilizable) equipment
3) High-quality piercing jewelry designed to help your piercing heal quickly and without infection
4) Follow-up care, in the case of piercings more exotic than earlobes
Is safety, peace of mind, and the knowledge that you’re paying a local artist rather than a massive corporation worth the extra $40-60 to you? It is to me.
Go local. Go professional. Save Claire’s for buying cute fluffy pieces after your ears have healed.
Hey y’all.
Just know that this post saved at least two little girls ears.
When they started making comments about wanting pierced ears I mentioned many of these points to their father. (who was goth and had his own bad piercing story) and he took them to a local shop that was as family friendly as possible to get their ears properly done.
“You can romanticize me all you wish, but the devil wrapped in silk is still the devil.”
— A Word To My Lovers
People: So you’re willing to risk promising relationships and friendships just because someone is homophobic/transphobic/sexist/racist?
Me: yes
“I need your teeth in me, slow and vicious, to tell me my armor is just skin, bones, only bones.”
— Jamaal May, from “The Whetting of Teeth,” The Big Book of Exit Strategies
I apologize if I ever was a toxic person in your life, I’m maturing more everyday, correcting my wrongs and slowly but surely becoming a better version of me.
i want someone to kiss me like heath ledger did to jake gyllenhal in brokeback mountain