For as long as I can remember, I had always wanted to get a tattoo. I recall telling my mom that I wanted to get one when I was about 15 years old. She looked at me with possibly the sternest expression I’ve ever seen on her and said no. So, like a rebellious little child, I fought back and asked her why I couldn’t. And she simply said, “Do what you want with your body once you turn 18. Nothing before that!”
By the time I turned 18, I had totally forgotten about this. I still wanted a tattoo, but I had just gone off to college and there was just other stuff going on in life. Plus, I couldn’t decide on what I would get done.
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When I turned 21, I moved back home. Being in college, calling a country other than India home, and travelling to other cities had made me kind of fall in love…with just moving around. I set major goals for myself about taking trips and exploring new places, even little cities in India I had never been to. That’s when I knew what my perfect first tattoo would be!
But the problem was that I’ve always been really scared of needles. It’s not the pain of it that scared me, but I could just never bear to see needles touch my skin. Maybe it was a phobia, I don’t know. But I just didn’t know how I would ever manage to get a tattoo if I couldn’t even bear to look at it when it was being done! It wasn’t surprising that my rescue came in the form of my two new best friends. They both had multiple tattoos on their bodies and they told me how it really felt to get one done – how the pain was more of a dull, constant-bee-sting type rather than a knife-slicing-you-open type. One of them even told me that it kind of hurts as much as getting your eyebrows threaded. And, yes, oddly enough, this really helped.
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One of them went with me when I finally made the appointment. My mind was so made up that I didn’t want to wait another day, so I took a longer lunch break from work and went to the mall. The guys at the tattoo parlor were really chilled out and made me feel super comfortable. When they realized that it was my first tattoo, they told me that I’ll be fine. After all, I have 3 piercing in my ears, and this won’t be much worse. That gave me the confidence boost I needed before they started the process.
Now, I won’t lie, it did hurt! I almost crushed my best friend’s fingers with my other hand. But after the first minute, I adjusted to the pain a bit. I understood clearly what my friends had meant when they said “dull constant bee stings.” It took all of 15-20 minutes for them to be done, if I’m not wrong. And two minutes in, I couldn’t stop staring at how beautiful it was turning out to be! Yes, I was staring at that scary looking needle touching my skin but not feeling all that scared while doing it. They then wrapped my wrist up once they were done (and I was done taking a picture!) and told me all about the aftercare and how I should call them in case I had any issues.
I have 5 tattoos now. And I can’t wait to get my 6th!! 😀
