Transformation Tuesday: My Tattoo Story

This should be interesting. If you want to know the story behind my stomach tattoo, please keep reading!

---

So, I was 19 at the time, and had just gone through a bad breakup with a long term boyfriend. Oh yeah. This is one of those stories. Feel free to judge. Honestly, if I could go back I would have smacked myself. Like open handed. I was really young and really stupid, but you couldn’t have told me otherwise.

The ironic part about this whole story is that prior to this experience, I had already gotten the vast majority of my work (47 or so tattoos) done at a reputable shop. I knew better.

I started out by doing some shopping around at all of my local (within 20 miles) tattoo shops to get the best price I could find. I wanted “Pain is weakness leaving the body” tattooed all the way across my stomach, right under my boobs. My regular tattoo shop quoted me something around $1K for the work in total just because of how big I wanted it. Go big or go home, right? I should have went home. Eventually I was on my 4th tattoo shop and this dude goes, “I can do it right now for $200.” This was after spending an entire day hearing people quote me anywhere between $600 and $1K.

I was stupid. I was super angsty. I just wanted to get the work done. Some people drink. I got tattoos. Now I just smoke. Wow, I have great vices. 

The entire process took an hour, with me almost passing out twice and choking back vomit more times than I can count. And clearly, with the amount of tattoos I already have, I’m no baby when it comes to pain. The gun was so loud that I couldn’t even hear my friends speak to me, when they were right next to me. And I remember the “artist” getting pissy with me for something stupid like breathing too hard. I don’t remember exactly what it was, just that it was insanely stupid and unavoidable.

When it was all said and done, I literally felt like I was about to die. I didn’t even look at the work until later that night (it had been done at noon and I don’t think I saw it until around 6pm). Originally, I showed my dad and he goes, “Did you write on yourself with a sharpie?” I really didn’t think it could be that bad, so I turned and looked for myself.

Oh. My. God.

This was six hours later and the lines were already blown out and I was starting to get a blister. After six hours. Once the swelling went down (which took days, and that’s not normal for me), I saw how bad it really was. On top of what I had already noticed, I saw that the cursive was just bad and that one letter in the middle of the sentence was capitalized, and that the shading was patchy at best. And then certain parts of my tattoo started to blister. What even????

Needless to say, I went back to those other shops and asked how to pull the ink out, what could be done about the tattoo, and where I should go to have removal done. After that, I spent an entire week out of work, lathering myself in Neosporin and Vasoline, picking the scabs, draining the blisters, just trying to pull out as much ink as I could. After getting different opinions on what everyone could do for me once I lightened it and healed up well enough, I ended up going back to my trusted tattoo shop and getting a massive coverup done. This took about 29 hours in total and cost me another $1,300. But, the experience was well worth it. I had grown men coming up to me in awe of how well I was sitting. And then I went out back and puked all over myself. Hot, right? But now I know my pain threshold, haha.

---

Moral of the story is, don’t be stupid and do things on a whim. Especially things that will be permanent.

If you’re interested to see the before and after, you can click here to see what the tattoo looked like on day 2, and here to see the final coverup the day after it was completed.

Do you have a story like this? Or do you know someone who does? I’d love to know if there are more people out there that have had horribly botched tattoos. Then maybe I won’t feel so bad about how stupid I was ;P Let me know below!

If you’ve stuck around this long, please check me out on social media too! You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest ♥♥♥

Always,

♥Char.