I got my tattoo yesterday...

It was some experience. I had built it up in my mind to be something very big, with huge needles and lots of pain. I almost fainted because of the anxiousness coupled with the heat of yesterday. But in the end I sat there for 1 hour and 20 minutes as I let some guy I don't know scar me for life. Why the negativity you might ask, mainly because I am very happy about the tattoo and have no regrets, if that makes sense.

I chose the design many weeks ago and had decided that I was going to get a tattoo months ago, my birthday seemed the best time as it was far away, but these things always catch up with you. I had no worries about having a tattoo on my arm, I knew that it was what I wanted but what I didn't want was to have to sit there whilst somebody chiselled away at my arm.

In the end it only hurt for about 5 minutes and the following 1 hour and 15 minutes was like somebody tickling my skin. I have always though that I see pain differently to most people, maybe it is a result of trauma at a time when I was learning basic functions. This may sound weird but I can often see pain, sometimes it will be a red square, sometimes it will be a green circle, often it will be a pointy, yellow arrow. Does this sound strange or this sound normal to you? I have only ever asked one person so I don't know if I am in a minority or not.

Yesterday it was yellow cones, lots of them. It is very rare that pain is 3D, usually it is 2D, but yesterday it was very definitely 3D. I have thought that maybe it is because I was in a lot of pain when I first saw these things as a child; this is my best guess. There are no smells and no sounds just shapes and colours and similar pain has a similar picture in my mind.

Anyway, back to yesterday. I had visited the tattoo place to book my tattoo a couple of weeks before and I knew that I had to find somewhere very clean, what I was secretly hoping for was a room with stainless steel and white paint, but what tattoo artist would want to work in a room like that. What I got was a slightly cluttered and noisy little room above a shop, but this is how it is; the place was amazingly clean to the point of overprecaution. If you have health problems and you want a tattoo then Studio 81 in Picadilly Gradens in Manchester comes highly recommended from me, but speak to your GP/Cardiologist first.

I am very proud of my tattoo and I am off to show people I work with now, I have included a picture of it below but the camera is very poor quality when it takes a close up so the actual tattoo is much more bolder and colourful than the one shown below.

I rediscovered yesterday something that I had almost forgotten, if you are scared to do something then just do it because it is never as bad as you build it up to be.