(no subject)
two years ago today i was in prague. i went home to lipova 2 after our last lecture/class in the city. susan wasn't home and neither was our host family. i decided to walk to karlova 25--the alternatiff area. des and i had previously spent a day walking around the city and checking out places to get pierced. tattoo tsunami seemed to be the nicest, but maybe it just reminded me of home
(this also makes sense--from my journal on 10/29/06: "i'm ready to go home now. i'm so lonely." i then made a list of songs i had been listening to a lot. the first song is big d & the kids table's cover of "new england" it also includes such songs as "the book of right-on" by joanna newsom, "fuck the pain away" by peaches, "just a simple plan" by piebald, "in the aeroplane over the sea" by neutral milk hotel, "summer in the city" by regina spektor, "trouble" by elliott smith, and "ballgame" by kevin devine. weird, i haven't listened to a lot of these since.)
so anyway, i walked to tattoo tsunami, went in, and told the woman at the desk i wanted my septum pierced. i honestly don't know what made me do it. i wanted to, but even i thought that the desire was fleeting. i guess i just wanted to do something. i wanted to stop talking about doing something and actually DO it. the woman and i talked a little bit, while she got everything ready. and i do mean a little. the extent of my czech is "ahoj" and she knew limited english. i guess that's why she first started to pierce something other than my septum. at that point i was thinking that, shit, this is a bad sign and i should just leave now, while also feeling obligated to stay.
we got that sorted out and i ended up with a ring in my nose. it was painful and my eyes watered and i bled and i pulled away when the needle was halfway through. but in the end it turned out okay. (and it even healed straight!) looking at it made me feel sick, though, and it was heavy. i walked back to the apartment. i thought the walk would never end and i felt like everyone was staring and i hadn't even really looked in the mirror before i left and the whole time i thought blood must have been dripping out of my nose. but it wasn't. it was cold out and it made the ring feel even heavier.
when i got home my host family was back. marketa didn't really know what to say. susan came home and saw it, too. and said she liked it. the next night we all met for our group dinner and des was surprised i actually did it. then the next morning we all left for krakow, except seri, who left for home. i was very sad that day, even though seri and i hadn't really talked at all while in prague. i felt, at the time, he was the one i had talked to the most. before prague, obviously. but now, i think that that was probably me wanting to have been closer to him. it took me a long time to really open up to anyone. susan was actually probably the first, while we lived together in prague. i hate always being so guarded. i think it's getting better, but (okay, this is tangental. all of this, but...) i feel like every time i do that's the end of the closeness and my relationships are strained and awkward after that. take jordann for example. take fucking kristina for example. maybe other stuff is going on there. she's a busy girl. i've been busy lately. but we haven't really hung out at all or even really talked in probably a month. but we had sleepovers during the summer and dinner dates and went out for drinks and we did things together. it all makes me feel really lonely and like i should just stop trying.
okay, back to the septum story. because it's my septum's birthday and it is kind of interesting (for me) to revisit.
the healing process went nicely, until london, where i was living with the nick and carol macarthur (and their dreamy son kit) and des! i ran out of saline solution and my piercing grew a painful little bump that stayed with me until months after i had returned home. also, i seemed to hit it all the time while it was healing, though i was taking precautions not to. when i got back to maine, i ventured out one snowy night (i feel like it was the day before one of those big holidays), and found jb the piercer. well, he wasn't there, so one of his associates called him and he showed up like 15 minutes later, with beer breath. yet i let him take a needle and cut off the bump in my nose. ow. jen, my friend with a couple dozen or more piercings told me that was a stupid idea. yeah, probably. the bump grew back and finally, after half a semester of being back at elmira, it was gone.
a few weeks before i was to go to india, meg and i drove to binghamton so i could buy a retainer to put in and flip it up while traveling. it wasn't something i wanted to deal with in india, on top of being white and fat and a woman and from the u.s. and extreme temperatures. no luck with the retainers, so i got a curved barbell instead. after about one minute of being ring-free (which felt SO strange), the hole had to be tapered open for the new ring. and the guy who put it in told me i would be able to flip it up into my nose anyway. i couldn't. my piercing is too far back / my nose is not long enough to be able to do that. so i had a new expensive piece of metal in my nose and no way to hide it in india. and people talked about it in india, but it wasn't too bad.
nothing too exciting until july of this year, when my expensive curved barbell fell out somewhere between making out with luc in lake auburn and waking up in his bed the next morning. i called out of work and went to the piercer's instead to save my piercing. which again had to be tapered open. and the woman putting the new cbr in had a really difficult time of it. but! in the end it worked out, until next time, i guess.
so that's the past two years of my life, as told through my septum piercing. well, my mom says she doesn't even notice it anymore.