All about that piercing life. || Jewellery Collection Exhibition 2/2

Along with the second portion of photos from the Ulster Museum Jewellery Collection Exhibition, I have a story for you from my rather crazy youth:)

@castleberry reminded me of former great love of mine - piercing. My fondness for piercing started very innocently. In kindergarten, a lot of girls had their ears pierced and I also really wanted to wear earrings. My Mum agreed, but said she didn't like earrings done with the so-called 'cosmetic gun' because she noticed that many girls had their ears pierced unevenly. Completely unexpectedly my Dad took up the challenge - he pierced my ears the way they were done in the old days - he sharpened the earrings my Mum had bought me (I still remember them now, they were tiny silver bows with an orange eye in the middle) and pierced my ears by holding a raw potato cut in half behind my ear. Seriously. You need to put something under the ear so that the needle or, as in my case, a sharpened earring, can stop on something stable. I didn't scream or cry, but I remember that my ears became warm and I became little light-headed.

Regardless of that - I was very happy and really grateful to Dad. I wore the earrings every day for many years - constantly losing them and buying new ones. I wore the so-called 'screws' because I was participated in many sport-like activities and any other earrings would have been a risky choice ;)

My hunger grew as I ate. When I was 13 all I wanted was to have several earrings in one ear. I asked my parents about it and they agreed that I was crazy. But! I didn't let it go and after a while my Dad decided that he could do one extra earring in my ear because he would rather do it himself, at home, safely than risk me getting a stupid idea and asking a friend for help :) I think he was quite right. At that age I was starting to slip out from under their influence and the earring would probably have appeared in my ear anyway. So another earring appeared in my right ear, above the first one that was done years back.

A few weeks later, I asked Dad to do another hole - and this time he didn't agree. I smiled to myself and remembered that Dad always has veterinary needles in the car (my Dad is(was, now retired) a farmer and stock-farmer, and often gave injections to animals himself when the vet couldn't get there in time). The needles were individually wrapped, sterile but very thick. I made the hole myself, using a raw potato like Dad. But the pain was incomparably worse. Nevertheless - I was very pleased with myself. My parents were not thrilled with my new 'look' though :D Mum tried to persuade me to take out the earring and let the hole seal itslef, but I said it was very important to me. And to my surprise - my parents stopped interfering with my new 'interest'.

I made more holes in my right ear at intervals of a few weeks - a month. The edge of my right ear was occupied all the way to the top of it - I had 8 piercings at the time- 5 'screws' - silver little balls and 3 tiny hoops at the very top. The following ear piercings on the edge of the ear were not a big challenge - well, except maybe piercing through the gristle - which was always very unpleasant and quite difficult. But pain was never a problem. I've always had a fairly low pain threshold, but I think in this case it was more the adrenaline and the fact that I was becoming more proficient at handling needles. At the time I would often pierce the ears of friends at school, and even my two cousins decided to use mu ‘service’. By this time, I was using professional equipment - thinner venflons (0.8 mm) and piercings made of surgical steel or titanium.

Piercing ears in the 'standard' way started to bore me. Besides, the whole rim of my right ear was already filled with metal. So I decided to give myself a more difficult challenge - to pierce the so-called 'ear-pebble' (Latin: Anthelix). This is the arched cartilage of the ear. Piercing it was extremely painful, and required me to use a lot of force - you have to pierce through the thick gristle. Also - I then had to put in an earring that I had never used before - a so-called 'bar' (or barbell). I needed a 12mm earring length - or at least I thought I did. The day after the 'procedure' my ear swelled up so much that one screw slipped and the earring fell out of my ear as I slept. The next day I bought a longer earring, disinfected the wound thoroughly and put a new earring in. It was not pleasant, not gonna lie. The wound took a long time to heal, but when the hole was completely healed - I could wear the shorter earring no problem. I was pleased with myself, but at that point I just had to admit that it would be better to ask someone for help next time, because it's really difficult to pierce your own ears:))))

Towards the end of high school I met a boy who was as much in love with piercing as I was. He himself had also pierced his ears, nose, nasal bridge(with the same 'bar' piercing as mine in cartilage). I pierced his neck with a 'surface bar' bent upwards at the ends , did a few extra piercings in both his ears, pierced his tongue and eyebrow. He placed two 1.2 cm 'surface bars' along my sternum, pierced my bottom lip, tongue and several additional piercings in my ears (for instance in the ear slice - Latin 'tragus' and in the ear counter slice - Latin 'anitragus') and several other places ;)

My love for earrings passed with my love for my 'partner in crime'. When we separated - I slowly took out ‘souvenirs’ of our relationship one by one. To this day I'm not sure if I really stopped liking the piercing or if it just took on negative connotations for me.

The fact is that today I don't wear jewellery on a daily basis at all. Some of the 'non-standard' pierced areas have never healed, and if I wanted to - I could go back to the 'old look'. But I don’t think that would be still ‘me’.