I used to be able to talk shop with fellow pierced individuals because I had a lot of the same piercings. "Yeah," I'd nod and point, "That one was a bitch to heal." Now I nod and say, "I used to have that pierced."
At A Glance Author spikeyannie Contact [email protected] When It just happened Location New York, NY About 2 years ago, I first made the decision to get three of my not-so-great tattoos removed with a laser. I also wanted to see what my life would be like if I removed most of my piercings (I kept the eyebrow ring for a little while). I still have all the jewelry that I took out and have retired over the years. It rattles around in one of those little art supply containers meant for beads and things like that. I have no idea what to do with it. Sometimes I'll take out a piece and look at it and try to remember where it went or when I bought it and what it looked like in my face or ear or wherever it was.
I try to find photos of myself from that point in my life, as if to prove that I'd really done it, but somehow there aren't any and all of a sudden it almost feels like it all happened to somebody else. Mysteriously, my mother stopped taking photos of me by the time I was in high school. She hated it all. My own mother hated the way I looked. Maybe that was part of why I tried to be "normal" for a little while, because I just wanted to please her instead of placing all this meaning on something that is really pretty superficial.
Sometimes I hear that little voice from my subconscious saying, "You know you miss some of this stuff. You're safe now in New York and you know who you are. Do it again. Just a little this time. Your mother can't condemn you now and if she tries, just tell her you're still doing everything you set out to do." And I nod and wonder how many of my old holes could still be opened up. I wonder how it would look to stretch my inner conch piercing so that I can put a hollow tunnel in there, or about this new piercing procedure I'm contemplating for the center of my lip. I wonder about the half-sleeve designs I'm vaguely tossing around in my head and on paper for my right upper arm. About how much any of what I'm doing now, would really change if I went back to the needle and the salt water soaks and the blood and ink beading up on my skin as the tattoo machine buzzes.
I say "went back to" but do I really mean "continue"? I think somewhere in the reasoning behind why I underwent all that change in an attempt to "clean up", I'm a little disturbed by the things I lost and the things it made me afraid of. I think my decision to fit in, came out of some negative feelings. It came out of looking in the mirror one day and saying, "I hate the way I look." Now that it's been a few years, I have to wonder about my motivations here.
Why did I choose to look that way in the first place? Okay, sure. It was a way to hide and to basically have an obvious reason for people to treat me in certain ways, instead of allowing for the possibility that they would treat me well or treat me badly based on my character and the things I had to say (God forbid!). It was also a way to create a particular aesthetic and express particular things in a way that, at the time, made me really happy. My version of sitting on the couch eating Ben & Jerry's, or going out and getting trashed, or any of the other ways we react when we want to get away from real life, was to modify my body.
And then I think about how severely my mother reacted against it and how even other people were just completely unreasonable about these stupid, simple things. It's just skin. Of all the ways in which I could have damaged myself as a person, it's just skin. Skin and scars and stories I will never forget. It makes me wonder, what the hell was the problem in the first place? Looking at those subcultures now, stepping back a little at the age of 24 and living in a city where you could walk around in a bikini in the middle of January and nobody would care, I really start to wonder if I was not reacting to a situation instead of a legitimate feeling. In other words, now that I've found myself, in a sense, now that I've established what I want to do and started making money off it (slowly but surely!), I feel I have truly earned the right to look the way I want to, in part because I now have the self-confidence to defend it. Whatever I do, nobody can ever look at me again and say, "She just doesn't know who she is or what she wants."
What did I really learn, going through all that change all at once? Did I learn that you're only as good as what people think of you? That having people stare at you and ask questions because of curiosity, is a bad thing? I got into body mods about 10 years ago, which I find incredible now. I am not ashamed of "who I was". I am in awe of the self-reliance and inner strength I must have possessed in order to continue to slowly and steadily move against the grain despite what Everyone Else(TM) thought.
When you're in the deathgrip of adolescence and everything else sucks so much anyway, the last thing you need is people telling you that it's all because of the way you look. Thanks to that sort of reasoning, I never learned to take appropriate responsibility for my actions and words because I always figured that looking the way I did, none of it mattered. Thanks to that sort of reasoning, I subconsciously seek Everyone Else's approval in everything I do.
It makes me really sad that at an age when I am still free to explore and change anything I want to, I almost feel like I've been driven back into hiding. Here in this city where I was born, where I found opportunities I couldn't have even dreamed of, I am recovering from my fear of permanence. In my mind, I keep putting off any modification that I think of for myself, because they are still things that I want, but somehow I keep thinking that I'm not free to do it yet. That something is supposed to happen which will make me unafraid.
What is the voice that holds us back from doing the things we really want to do, that Everyone Else doesn't have the courage to do? Where does it come from and why does it seem to get stronger as we get older? Maybe too many of us are willing to simply trade our band t-shirts for button-downs and call it a phase or even cringe when we do find those old photos of ourselves with 4 lip rings and the biggest smile on our faces.
Every few months I pay for my 3 bad tattoos all over again when I get them blasted with a laser, which hurts and makes me cry and always makes me really angry. No, not angry because I was young and stupid and got those bad tattoos in the first place. I can forgive myself for my mistakes but it's a lot harder to forgive the rest of the world. I came dangerously close to hating ALL tattoos after realizing the agony of removal. You have to wonder if the removal industry is making a killing off of convincing people that getting rid of something on the surface, on the skin, will revolutionize your life and make you a better person. Not so; this is where your thoughts and actions-which most people won't see because of the way you look- really come into play. This is where you can prove yourself to the world, as pierced and inked as you want.
I can tell you firsthand that there is a balance with all this stuff and that a few years down the line, after you've dumped off most of your body jewelry on your younger friends, or paid for the laser treatments once again, it doesn't necessarily feel any better than that pang of regret that you got when you first realized you didn't want to look that way anymore. Here you are, being a successful member of society, and now you think you know what you don't want. But you still don't know what you want to replace it with. You're right back to square one, like Everyone Else.
Your reasons for removing the tattoo should be ten times as valid as getting it in the first place. It shouldn't be this negative journey of, "I hate them and I want them gone." It should be, "This wasn't a good choice but I want to try and fix it so that in the future, I make better choices." Dealing with the pain of that laser shouldn't make you hate your tattoos and fear the idea of getting additional work done. It should make you realize that you really need to think about modification on a different level. You need to think about why you do it for YOU.
Part of what bothers me about that fated day when I tossed out my black band t-shirts and took out my piercings, is that all of a sudden, I was being rewarded for "cleaning up" and there was this huge sigh of relief of "Oh Thank God It Was Just A Phase." I"m sorry, I don't do "phases". It's not that simple; everything I am ever interested in, stays with me. It's a layer, not a phase. It's yet another component of who I will always be, the true self, the self that nobody can change. I took out my piercings because I wanted to see what life would be like without them, but I also took them out because I was tired of having to deal with everybody else treating me in certain ways or having this set, fixed idea of who I was. In fact, now that I think about it, I took them out for a lot of the same reasons why I got them in the first place. It all comes down to creating an image.
But now I'm truly experiencing the world. I'm truly seeing that a lot of it is all in how you present whatever you're about. I try to smile more. I try to deal with people better and keep an open mind and be easygoing about things. And this is all good; the downside is now, I'm not sure how I want to present my external image. Finding that balance has been a perpetual exercise in indecision. I keep seeing myself with a few subtle, fun piercings, interesting and unique hair that isn't ridicuously Out There, and some really nice tattoos. And I smile and laugh a lot and talk to everyone, and they all like me because of my ideas and my sense of humor, and that too becomes part of my image. Younger people like me because I'm Cool. Older people like me because I'm not like all those other freaky tattooed kids.
My mother will continue to cringe at every new adornment but you know what? Let her. She has nothing to complain about now. I just can't allow her opinions to affect my wild and crazy image anymore. Some journeys of self-discovery are more circular than we think, and if hers is a straight line instead, she's missing out. I'm still young and free to play around. If I don't feel like destroying myself with alcohol and drugs and casual sex, I can at least do something else interesting. My values are solid and my head is on straight and nobody in the film industry is never going to look at me in disgust and say, "Why would you do that to yourself?" I am never going to get turned down for work because of my appearance. And if I do, then I wouldn't have wanted to work for that production company anyway.
If you want to change the composition of your shot, you can either change the lens or move the camera. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages, mostly involving depth of field. Life can be this way too. If you move the camera, you're changing your entire existence to accomodate what other people want. If you change your lens, it's as if you're changing your perspective on what they think of you. Most of the people who bother you about your piercings and tattoos will never understand it, so why uproot your own self-expression to try and reason with them? It's not going to work. Even if you take all that stuff out of your face, the same people who asked rude questions on the subway are now going to become the ones who read the Village Voice over your shoulder or push rudely past you when trying to run across the platform and catch the downtown 2 train.
What is this unwritten rule about closing yourself off to things as you get older anyway? Where is it written in stone that you have to turn into this boring person once you get out of college? For who? I still enjoy the body modification "scene" because it is full of so many interesting and creative people with a lot to say. And they say it well. They're smart and innovative and they are constantly finding ways to create change. Stay true to your beliefs. Don't let them try to fool you into thinking that conformity will make you a better person; instead, find the balance and compromise with them. Be open-minded and tolerant of the people who do not do the same for you, and when they see how bad it makes them look, maybe they will change their lens too.