I should start by say­ing that I’ve wanted a pierc­ing since late high school, either an eye­brow pierc­ing or a tongue stud¹.

For some rea­son though, I never seri­ously con­sid­ered it. To me, it was like hav­ing chil­dren; one of those things you know you’d want some day, but don’t take it seri­ously. Then last week, I was sit­ting at my desk and ran­domly thought, “Why not?”. So I slept on it, and woke up the next day still want­ing one. That’s when I decided to do it.

My biggest con­cern was that it wouldn’t match me. Some peo­ple with pierc­ings look like they’re try­ing to over­com­pen­sate by being part of a “scene”, or by being younger (i.e. the midlife cri­sis, which my dad seems to be liv­ing out with three pierc­ings last year), or it just doesn’t fit their face. The last thing I wanted to do was get some­thing that screamed atten­tion for the sake of it. Most peo­ple have told me that I’m a far cry from mid-life cri­sis age, but I’ve feel­ing much older lately.

So I fig­ured that I’d rather get it at this age, than when I’m in my fifties like my dad, when it looks ridicu­lous. But as Tiana reminded me, it’s much less per­ma­nent than a tat­too. If I don’t like it, I can just take the pierc­ing out with min­i­mal scar­ring (as long as there are no other complications).

So I decided to get a hor­i­zon­tal, because I find that ver­ti­cals are not really my style (and alto­gether too com­mon for my tastes). The side seemed some­what arbi­trary to me, and I didn’t decide which side until I did my hair one morn­ing and noticed that the part on my hair was on the right, and so it seemed like there was a more open space there for the pierc­ing to fit.

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1. My work in the den­tal indus­try, how­ever, has made me shy away from get­ting any­thing in the mouth, so that elim­i­nated the only other option for me. [↑]