Reading self piercing stories on bmezine.com, the majority of authors make it out to be really easy. Often using any tool they can find; safety pins, thumb tacks, sewing needles, rather than proper piercing needles they happily push it through their skin or cartilage with no mention of pain or hesitation. The tool goes in, there's a bit of swearing, a bit of blood, the jewellery goes in and everyone's happy (with the exception of the parents). Yet for me it was completely different. � it was a lot harder than I thought.
At A Glance Author wolfbane Contact [email protected] IAM wolfbane When It just happened Artist Myself Studio Kitchen/bathroom Location Bath After getting some piercing needles from a friend a few days ago I thought I'd try piercing myself. I decided to pierce my hand web for several reasons; it's a place I can see easily, it's skin so I won't be going through muscle or cartilage and is pretty thin so it's not like doing my lip. I thought it would be easy as I have lots of piercings, and have seen piercings being done many times, so I went ahead and sterilised the top of the fridge, where everything was when I got pierced last time. I lay out a sheet of kitchen paper on to which I placed the packaged needle, a small plate with some lubricant on it, the barbell I was going to use and some Sterets swabs. I held my hand up to the light to look for any veins that might be in the way and marked where I wanted the piercing to go. I then put on a pair of disposable gloves and put the needle in the lube so as to ease it through the skin a bit easier. I cleaned the barbell with one of the swabs and put that on the plate next to the needle. Next I removed one of the gloves (left as that was the hand I was doing) and cleaned the webbing that I would be piercing with another swab.
So far so good.
I then picked up the needle with my gloved hand and realised how much I was shaking. 'That's ok, it's just because I've never done this before,' I thought. I placed the needle against the mark I had made and stood there with the needle resting against my hand for a couple of minutes. It was ridiculous. I mean I've had twenty odd piercings - I know that it doesn't hurt that much. I've been harming myself for years and I know that I can deal with that, but for some reason I just couldn't stop shaking when I was holding the needle. I took some deep breaths to try and calm myself down and then started to push the needle through my skin, very slowly. In hindsight that was my big mistake; if I'd have been able to do it quickly then I think I would have been fine, but I pushed slowly and watched as the needle went through. I could see the bump the needle made as it travelled under the skin, tingeing it a pale bluish. I kept applying pressure and could see the skin on the other side of the web being pushed out as the needle tried to force its way through. Then I started to feel faint.
I let go of the needle and put both arms on top of the fridge, resting my head between them. I closed my eyes and breathed. The floor seemed to be a long way off and I could hear a rushing noise in my ears. I stayed like that for a minute or two then looked up to see the needle quivering in my hand. I didn't think that I'd be able to get it all the way through without fainting so pulled it out put it back on the kitchen paper and sat down in the living room until I stopped feeling so bad. The cut from the needle itched but wasn't painful and after a few minutes I felt normal again. I got up, put the needle in a plastic bottle on top of a cupboard in the kitchen and put the rest of my stuff away.
Needless to say I felt like a complete idiot
A couple of hours later and all I had to show for my attempt that afternoon was a tiny pink mark just in the folds of my skin, completely unnoticeable unless pointed out. There was no pain whatsoever. I felt like a wuss. All afternoon I'd been thinking about why I was unable to pierce myself. I sat at my desk with a packaged needle in front of me and I started getting nervous even though I wasn't sure that I was going to be doing something with it. It was similar to the excited nervousness I get when I go for a piercing, but different because this time I know it's me who's doing it. Me who has to push the needle through my flesh. It's a mildly disconcerting thought.
I picked up the needle that's sitting in front of me and take it out of its packaging. It's very sharp and gleams in the light from my desktop lamp. I turned it over a few times, just looking at it, and noticed my hands weren't shaking as much as they were earlier. They're still shaking though, and clammy. I put the needle back in its packaging and typed some more while trying to decide what to do. I wanted to do this piercing, I knew that. I knew that once I'd broken through that barrier things would be fine. 'It's the fear of the unknown that's making me nervous' I thought. I took a look at the needle again, sitting in its plastic casing just next to my right hand, waiting for me. I needed to do this.
Deep breaths, right?
I got up and went to the bathroom. I had this feeling that running my hand under water will help me pierce it, but I didn't do that. Instead I washed my hands, removed the needle from its packaging again and held it up to my hand once more. This time there's no sterilisation, no marking, no gloves � I was doing everything wrong and I knew it. I held it against the palm side of my hand and pushed ever so slightly. There was a small pricking sensation as the needle touched under the surface of the skin and I moved it away. I put the needle on the other side of my hand and rested it there, wondering why it was taking so much to do this. I pulled the needle away once more.
By that point I was getting extremely annoyed with myself, which on the one hand, I thought, may be a good thing; in this mood I am more likely to just get on with it. I ran the tip of the needle up my arm twice; it left two red scratches and didn't hurt at all. I decided that I needed something underneath my hand so that I could push down onto something hard rather than pushing into thin air. I went into my room and found my A4 cutting board, took it into the bathroom and rested it on top of the toilet seat. I put my hand on top and placed the needle roughly where I want it to go through. I averted my eyes and I pushed. There was some pain, and slowness. It seemed to take ages for the needle to go through; nothing like a professional piercing. After a few seconds I felt a popping sensation and the needle was through the webbing of my hand, silver gleaming on both sides. I stood up and looked at it, amazed that I'd managed to pierce myself. The placement was completely wrong but wasn't something I really cared about at that moment.
The next step was to get the bar in.
With a needle sticking out of one hand I grabbed the barbell from its plastic bag and tried unscrewing it. It felt strange trying to grip with the needle hand so I called my boyfriend and he undid the barbell for me, glancing cursorily at the needle, which was balancing precariously. I tried to push the needle in a bit further so that I could get to the hole more easily, but it hurt and so I stopped. Trying to put the bar in however just doesn't work. Either the needle is too small (1.2mm rather than 1.6) or I needed to push it through further to give me enough room to manoeuvre. At that moment I was so pleased that I'd got the needle all the way through that I wasn't too worried about the jewellery. I put the barbell down, took the needle out of my hand and washed away the blood with warm water.
Nat looked at me as though I was mad when I sat down next to him, pleased that I've managed to pierce myself, even if the end result is only a small scab rather than a nice shiny barbell. I'm glad that I was able to do it though.
So to the point of this article; why was it so hard to pierce myself when everyone else seems to find it so easy? The only conclusion I can reach is that I'm just not used to piercing myself. I might have the technical know-how but when it comes to actually going through with the act I have nothing to go on. All of my previous piercings have been done either with a gun, or professionally. Above all they have been done by people who have had practice at doing it. While it might be possible for me to pierce someone else, it was harder for me to pierce myself.
I admit to feeling confused about how long it took me to get a needle through my hand. I think that's to do with my history of self harm as well as the number of piercings I have. Before starting the piercing I was confident, almost cocky, that I would be able to do this easily. I had visions of me piercing my nipples for the first piercing, giving myself surface piercings and doing it really well. I know that I am able to hurt myself because I have done it for years. I know that I thought if I can carve my arms up I can put a needle through myself. The thing I forgot though was that when I self harm I'm in a completely different frame of mind. When I self harm I am angry, depressed, longing for some kind of release from that. I want to punish myself, to hate myself. But that's not how I feel about piercings. Piercings give me confidence and make me feel good about myself; a complete contrast to the feelings which made me think I could do this easily. I know that if I'd been angry at myself, or depressed, or anything of the things that make me cut I could have done this piercing in an instant. But I wasn't. I was thinking rationally, I was planning this out. In fact I think I was thinking about it far too much. I took my time making sure that I had everything clean, that I was doing everything right. If it was a spur of the moment thing I wouldn't have been that nervous but I'd planned and sterilised things and worn gloves and done all the things I never do when I cut. It's almost like there was a sense of occasion about it which is never there when I deliberately harm myself, and that's partly what made it so hard to do.
While attempting this piercing I suddenly appreciated why people don't understand things like self harm; I was wondering why I want to shove things through my skin and hurt myself, even though I know that it won't hurt for that long and I'll end up with a piece of jewellery that I'll like and appreciate.
My cocksureness was, I believe, a major part of why I failed to pierce myself properly. I also think I chose the wrong spot to pierce; I could have done with a pair of clamps and a pair of extra hands to hold them as the skin really needed to be stretched out a bit further, making it easier to pierce. As far as piercing myself in a spot that I could see goes, I'm not sure if that was the best idea. I spent far too long looking at what I was planning to do, rather than just getting on with it, and in the end it got pierced when I wasn't even looking. Lat night showed me that while I know what I'm doing in theory, in practice it's a lot harder. That I was able to pierce myself completely the second time has a lot to do with less preparation coupled with exasperation. Of course I wouldn't recommend doing it the way I did the second time; ensuring all equipment and tools are clean and sterile is far more important than having some new jewellery in you, but I know my body has been subjected to worse than that and I know that I can deal with it.
The final question is why do others seem to find it easier to pierce themselves, even when using the wrong tools? I don't know. They may be braver (or more foolish?) than me, they may want the piercing so much but be unable to get it through other means, they may even be altering the truth slightly to make themselves sound braver than they are; no one really wants to talk about their embarrassments or failures, do they? But I can't speak for the other people who have done this, I can only speak for me, and what I've learned from it.
Overall this has certainly been a good lesson for me. While I'm looking forward to trying again I will be far less cocksure and hopefully a bit wiser. Looking back now I realise how na�ve I was to think that I'd be able to pierce away quite happily, and easily.