just got my septum pierced !!!!!!

OMFG yall this is such a huge deal for me 

Ive been wanting to get it pierced for like the past year or so, I always joked around that I felt dysphoric not being covered head to toe in piercings and tattoos so Ive always wanted to go crazy and do as many things as possible. The main problem however is my home environment; my mom is a self-proclaimed "conservative" when it comes to facial piercings and tattoos and didn't really approve of me getting any. She always retaliated with some pseudo spiritual stuff about how were like spiritual beings or whatever , and that because of it we shouldnt like get any piercings or tattoos (she has  her ears pierced btw). In my head i was like maam,,, life is too fucking short! my grandfather also is suuuper antiquated, and my mom told me about this one time that my uncle got his ears pierced and he crashed out at him for that, so far he hasn't really said anything abt it which is good! 

But because of this i felt trapped in a prison of not wanting to let them down; both over the fear of them being disappointed in me and also for like any potential retaliation. I talked about it with one of my closest friends who was also going through something similar, but it made us feel like teenagers who just so happened to be in their 20s, metaphorically adults but still having the lingering cloud of our parent's approval over us at all times. One time in the car i talked with my mom about getting a piercing and she told me that I could think about getting it when I was 25, which like internally i was bitch really?????? Keep in mind this was around last year when i was 22, so at the time it felt rlly like... infantilizing i guess??

My mom literally just saw it and she looked at me funny and asked me why i got it so big (mind u its a 24 gauge which im p sure is the smallest size that they can give u) and she also told me that why did i bother getting it if it was gonna be super visible which like,, im pretty sure that's the point? It doesn't bother me much because at the end of the day i know im in my glow so yeah LOL

In terms of the process itself it honestly wasn't the worst thing in the world!!! I went to the parlor that does the piercings and it was completely empty. They had some deathcore  playing loud as fuck in the background which 100% made me feel that I was in the right handsLMAO. speaking of, the guy that pierced was literally covered head to toe in tats and had some of the biggest gauged earlobes i think ive ever seen on someone (he also does likee,,, poly content which like more power to u king, he was so sweet to btw omfg). He sat me down on like those medical stools and did the traditional septum prep stuff, so like cleaning my nose with a cotton swab and getting that scissor thing that stretches ur nose up. When it came to getting the septum itself it was kinda scary but in retrospect it felt like getting a needle stuck in me when i do my labs for HRT but for my noseJSJSJSJS

After paying for the piercing itself and getting the basic info for aftercare i went to the nearby walgreens and bought the saline spray that'll (hopefully) save me from having a stinky piercing! while I was there i showed my partner and my coworker thru a call and they were both rlly happy and excited!!!

But all in all I'm just super proud of myself for undergoing the entire process. It's kinda like a small baby step to full independence and being comfortable in my own skin (the first major step was starting estrogen but that's a whole other story for another time). And to top it off i feel like I'm one step closer to turning into the alt girl that I've always wanted to be, which I wouldn't trade for anything else in the world :3