First tattoo

I got my first tattoo yesterday! People thought it was a joke because it was the first of April, but no, this is no joke. For those of you who didn't understand the clues in the last post: The Green Day album intended it was going to be something with Green Day, the cupcake that it was going to be pink and the plants shaped like hearts that it was going to be a heart grenade.

"You don't need a rocket scientist to figure out that it's going to be a heart grenade". That's what my boyfriend said when I asked if he could guess what I was going to tattoo. And well, I guess it's pretty obvious as I've been a crazy Green Day fan for many, many years now. They have been in my life since I was 13 and now I'm 21. I've always known that I wanna do something Green Day related when I get a tattoo. The difficult thing has been to figure out what. First I was thinking about tattooing lyrics from one of the songs, but I could never decide which song to choose. There are so many parts of their songs that make me feel like I was the one who wrote them. So I chose a heart grenade instead.

I did it in pink because I love the color and wanted it to be more unique. I've never seen a picture of a heart grenade tattoo in pink before. I love strong colors and contrasts, so that's why I wanted the lines in black to be quite thick. I did it on my upper arm because I like tattoos on arms and I thought it was a good place to begin with. The tattoo guy said to me: "It's not a small tattoo to do as a first tattoo" and my answer to that was: "I'm not the kind of person who does small things."

The heart grenade is a symbol that means many things to me. It obviously symbolizes Green Day and my love to Green Day. The American Idiot album was the first album I bought by them and also my absolute favorite album ever. It was the album who brought me into music and if it wouldn't be for Green Day I wouldn't have started playing guitar. Maybe I would not even listen to the music I do today, dress the way I do and be the way I am if it wouldn't be for them.

Green Day is not just a band to me, it's much deeper than that. They have helped me through many tough times and they have helped me believe in myself when nobody else did. When I discovered Green Day I got more courage to be the person I am, because they showed me that it's okay to be different. To be the minority. I know that lots of people don't understand my love for Green Day and that's fine. Sometimes I barely understand it myself. You know, sometimes when you really love someone or something it's hard to explain why.

The tattooing took about 2 hours. You might wonder if it hurt, and yes, of course it hurt a bit. You can't expect to get 1000 needles through your skin without feeling anything. But it wasn't that bad, you got used to it after a while. The feeling is hard to describe though.

To get a tattoo was a challenge for me. Not because I'm afraid of needles or sensitive to pain, but because I'm a perfectionist. For several years I've been thinking about what would be the "perfect tattoo", but I've never been able to come up with one that's good enough to me. I was afraid that I would get one and then feel like I should have done something else or different, because I'm rarely satisfied with anything. Now I realize that there are no perfect tattoos, so I just did one. Of course you should consider carefully what tattoo you want and where, but thinking too much is never a good thing. It just makes you end up doing nothing.

Here you have some pictures!