tarragon

I have been giving some consideration today to this post from Rainwolfkin on the subject of body modification.

She updated her journal before I got around to replying on the topic so I'll post my thoughts here instead.

I first decided I wanted a tattoo when I was about fourteen years old. My reasons are lost to me now and were probably completely banal anyway. Perhaps it had something to do with finding I didnt quite fit in at an English high school. I'd been away in Australia for a while and even though I knew people in high school from our time together as youngsters, the world seemed to have moved on while I was away. I had become an outsider and maybe that's why tattoos initially appealed.

Anyway, time went on and I hit 18. Still the class geek. So on the day of my 18th birthday I went out and got my first tattoo. From then on it became something of a birthday treat to myself. I had my second one on my 21st and my third on my 23rd, the year I graduated university.

My piercings were a little harder to pin down, until this evening when I did a little mental calculation of where I was in my life when I had one done and it occured to me that, with the exception of my ears, all my piercings have been done shortly after I've ended a relationship or lost a friendship that was important to me. They have always occured when I've been at my lowest point but I dont think I have had them done because I'm depressed. I see them more as a way to renew myself, to in some way make myself different from the person I was the day before when things seemed so bad. Some people get a new haircut, or buy a new wardrobe of clothes to make themselves feel good again. I get skewered. It's like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.