My Experience With: Getting a Tattoo

One of the things that I did this summer was to get my first tattoo. This is something that I've wanted to get for a while, but to be honest, I never thought that I'd actually get one done. My sister decided that she wanted one for her eighteenth birthday, and she wanted our mum, aunt and myself to go with her.

To say that I was nervous was an understatement. I actually nearly bottled out and didn't do it at all, because while I knew what I wanted my tattoo to be, I wasn't sure where I wanted it. I ended up going with my gut instinct and getting it on my ribs, and looking back I'm so glad that I did.

In terms of pain, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I'd heard that your ribcage is one of the worst places to get tattooed because it hurts so much, but I knew in my heart that that is where I wanted my tattoo, so I decided to just go for it. It's a fairly new philosophy of mine to start saying yes to more things, so I went for it and figured that if it went wrong, I'd just worry about it later.

As you can see from the pictures, it starts towards the back of my ribs and then comes forward onto the actual bone itself. The first part of the tattoo wasn't too bad at all in terms of pain, it was just a weird, uncomfortable feeling more than anything else. Towards the front, when it was more on the rib bone itself, that was more painful. I actually ended up digging my nails into my hand to give me something else to focus on, and that was more painful than the tattoo itself, so make of that what you will. It's only four little words, so it only took about five minutes, but that was quite enough for me. It was uncomfortable enough that I wouldn't want to have anything bigger or more detailed done in that location.

I got this done at the beginning of September. It's now the middle of October and it's all healed up and done with. I don't even notice it anymore. The first week or so after having it done, the skin was obviously very tender and it made wearing anything a pain, but it was definitely worth it, and now it's healed I forget it's there half the time.

I love it so much, and I'm so glad that I took the leap and got it done.

In case you're wondering what it says, it's 'this too shall pass'. Basically everyone has asked me what it means, and essentially, it's a philosophical saying that means that everything is temporary. All the negative stuff that you go through is only temporary, so don't stress about it, and the positive stuff is temporary too, so always be grateful and never take anything for granted.