Tattoo Story

About two months ago I got my first tattoo and I don't regret it for a second. I went about two weeks after my 18th birthday, I would have went the day of, but I really wanted Daniel to be there to hold my hand. I hate needles and had no idea what my pain tolerance was, but we will get to that later. Some people might think I just jumped right into it an never gave it a second thought, but don't worry I have been thinking about get a tattoo since I was 13. I have been waiting for a long time and even almost talked my mom into letting me get one on my 17th birthday, but I chose to go to Europe instead. I had also been looking at the same tattoo shop for years. One thing that has changed over the years was how many tattoos I was going to get and which ones I wanted. Before I started dating Daniel I wanted to get around 10 or 11 tattoos, they would all have been fairly small the biggest one would have right under my collar bone. Even thought I would still love to have many tattoos, being in a relationship means compromising. Daniel hates tattoos and in fact I spent months trying to even get him to go with me, but in the end we agreed that I was to get at the most two (even though now he is saying one is enough, but we will see about that). I thought about what I was going to get for a few months and I had it narrowed down to two things I knew in the future I would not regret. I originally want to start out small so I would know how it feels and what to expect by getting my first tattoo on the top of my right pointer finger on the part closest to the back of the hand. As some of you may know most tattoo shops will decline finger tattoos if it will be your first, because of the after care that is required. Knowing this I went into the shop a week before to check it out and make sure it was clean, but I also wanted to ask if they did finger tattoos. Sadly they said no. I was at a stand still, I wasn't sure if I wanted to get my second choice because it would be so much bigger and was said to be extremely pain full. I ended up going with my second choice which was a quote on the outside of my foot. I spent a lot of my time researching the placement and from what I was reading the side of your foot was supposed to be one of the most painful places to put a tattoo because it is filled with nerves and not a lot of muscle. I collected my courage and and drove 40 mins down to the shop scared out of my mind, but I wasn't going to back out. When we arrived I talked to the artist about the quote I wanted: "Lights on building and everything that makes you wonder". It is from the book "Perks of Being a Wallflower", which was later made into a movie in 2012. The quote was to long to fit on the side of my foot so I decide to just go with the first 3 words since I know the whole quote by heart, so I will always know the rest. This quote stuck to me and has a few different meanings to me. The first is quite literal, I love walking/driving thought a big city at night with all the different color lights shining. This is also one reason why Christmas is my favorite holiday, because of all the lights. Seeing all the lights just makes me happy and feel like anything is possible. It also is a symbol for this time in my life that I want to remember for as long as I can. Now on to the needle in the skin part. While he was setting up and putting the stencil on my foot I was quite nervous. It wasn't about if I was making the right choice, but about how bad it was going to hurt. As he turned on the machine and guided the needle towards my foot I prepared for the worse. In all honesty it was nothing how I thought it was going to be. It didn't really hurt as much as people had said, but there were parts that hurt more than others. The best way I can describe it is a cat constantly scratching you over and over again. I did find it true that if you talk to somebody during the process it does lower the pain, however it also caused me to twitch because I was not paying attention to what was being done so I would focus on the pain when it would hurt the worse and I wouldn't twitch (which was always on curves). It took about 2-2 and half hours to do the whole thing, and let me say I give a lot of props to the people that can sit there for 6 or so hours, the longer it took the more I could start to feel the pain. Over all I was pretty proud of myself for going through with it and am so happy I did.

After we were done the artist covered the tattoo and gave me instructions on how to take care of it. I will say the after care was way worse than the actual pain. Since the tattoo was on my foot I was not allowed to take a shower longer than 5 minutes with cold/semi-warm water. I am a girl, the shortest shower you can get out of me is maybe 20 minutes, so I had to resort to baths with my foot hanging over the side. I had to do this for 3 weeks, but I gave up in the middle of week 2 and just stuck my foot on the rim of the tub were the water coming from the shower head wouldn't hit my foot. I also had to put unscented lotion on my foot 3 times a day for 4 weeks. Another problem I had was shoes, I spent days looking for sandals that wouldn't touch any part of my tattoo, but I did finally find a pair. The worst part about the healing process was waiting. I really just wanted to see what it looked liked under the scabs and having dreams that half of your tattoo falls off really doesn't help. It was about exactly 3 weeks when the first scabs started to fall off and took about another week and half to completely heal. There was only one things I would like to fix about the tattoo and it is my fault. The L in lights, the ink did not take to my skin at the bottom curve of the L and the artist did warn me that the sides might not accept the ink due to the different skin type on the sides of the foot, and it could have also been when it was healing I didn't do something right on that spot and it took the ink out. You can see where there was ink, but it just looks faded. This can be easily fixed and I'm sure if I went back to the same guy he would just go over that small part for free since it is just a little curve. The reasons why I haven't gotten it done yet was mainly because I haven't had time to drive into the city, I had just finished the healing process, and I really didn't want to restart it again. Also it is a flaw and I kinda like it because nothing is perfect. I may get it fixed when and if I get my second one.