Piercing Rejection and the Painful Reality of Abandoning Hope

Last night, I was sitting in a hospital for five hours, attending to a man who had busted his head open after falling down the stairs at a house-warming party with a 0.35 blood alcohol level, four times the legal driving limit here in the United States.

This man, that I had picked up from lying in a pool of his own blood, just so happened to be...

As I was sitting in the room, in a folding chair next to a jug of his piss, waiting for him to come back from getting CT scans, I realized that I was in the perfect analogy for what I wanted to explain in this essay about piercing rejection.

This was a man who irritates me to no end, a man I had attempted a relationship with a decade before. The last time we tried, it ended horribly. In fact, the last time we were in the hospital together, I was in the bed and he was the one who put me there.

The party he took me to (or rather, I took him to on account of his unresolved DUI) was probably the 50th "last chance" I had granted him to prove that there was something worthwhile to this tumultuous relationship.

I wanted him to fit, badly.

Beneath the veil of his self-destructive alcoholism, underneath his harsh and vindictive defense mechanisms, I knew he was the sweetest man I would ever meet. Unfortunately, sweetness isn't a quality that is generally encouraged in men, and I knew that what he became was the result of having that quality consistently pummeled out of him.

I always thought that if I could help him, show him lightness, encourage the person I saw him to be, I could somehow heal him.

Listen up: I am in no way the right person for that job.

Patience is not a quality that comes naturally to me, I can be extremely harsh, and he always managed to find a way to bring out the worst in me. The worst of me is absolutely monstrous.

I have turned mapping out a person's mind to expose their greatest vulnerabilities into an art form, and when I’m triggered I am not above using them against someone to the highest extent imaginable.

Sitting next to me in the emergency ward of the hospital was a harsh reality, one that I had been seeing for a while but had chosen to deny. One that I believe he saw too, but never mentioned.

It crept silently into every room that we shared, seeped into the air we breathed. This relationship was already over. There was absolutely nothing either of us could do to save it.

When you add something into your life or (in the case of piercings) get something lodged inside of your person, your body has two choices: it can accept the new object and integrate it, or it can reject it.

Rejection is determined by many different factors, it could be material sensitivity, poor placement, trauma, even just something in your genetic code.

Just how a relationship can go really well for a while and then completely fall apart.

It’s important to note that there is a big difference between an infection and a rejection.

Infections can feel hot to the touch. There could be pus, swelling, redness or pain. Just as you might have a catastrophic fight with a significant other and make up after, infections can be salvageable by increasing your level of care.

Have a piercer substitute the jewelry, use sterilized saline spray twice a day, ensure it doesn't snag. You’ve got to listen to your body: if the symptoms are increasing, seek professional help. Couples therapy can work wonders.

Piercing rejection, on the other hand, is a process that begins with migration and ends with the piercing being pushed out of the surface of your skin.

When your body decides to reject something, there isn't much you can do to change its mind.

There might be a brief period at the start where your immune system is still attempting to adapt (like the last chance I granted the guy I've been seeing), in which case you can do everything you can to care for it and hope for the best.

How do you know if a piercing is on course for rejection?

In the case of something like an eyebrow piercing, you'll begin to see more of the jewelry. The piercing will look like it's closer to the surface, you might feel the bar more prominently underneath.

If you're really concerned, go to a piercer or a doctor and ask for a professional opinion.

Eventually, if it's a true rejection, you're going to have to make a call: watch as your body slowly migrates the piercing to the surface of your skin and pushes the jewelry out, or take it out on your own accord to prevent increased tissue damage and scarring.

This is one of those things that is easy to say, hard to do. If you decided to add something to your body (or your life), chances are you really, really wanted it there.

The lesson here is that there are a lot of things in life that are completely out of your control. Sometimes you'll have to turn away from hope entirely to protect yourself, or suffer the consequences.

I hope that you make the right choice.

Xoxo,
A

P.S: Learn from history: if that placement or jewelry type didn’t work for you before, it probably won’t work for you later. I’m going to try to do the same.