Piercing Intuition

Here’s a fun story about the merits of following one’s intuition that masks as a beauty tip.

Beauty tip:  Buy the best.

Notes on life:  Follow your Intuition or bleed for a year. So on my 49th birthday.  I did it.  I finally got a nose ring.  Gone were the days of thinking about it—no more distracting thoughts about what I didn’t do in my youth.  I was still alive and wanted it, so I got it.  And damn it— 49 will sound young when I’m 89, I told myself as I rounded the block a second time, simultaneously looking for parking near the shop and willing myself not to drive off.

I arrived at the place Yelp told me was the best place in a 5-mile radius to allow someone to poke me in the nose.  I get there and check out the jewelry for beginners.  To my delight, they have it— a tiny, tiny gold stud that will look like a speck of gold dust in the right light.  I don’t want my nose ring too big.  Dainty and sexy is the vision.  I point to it.  They have it in stock— omg, this is happening.  Happy Birthday to me.  And right as they walked me back to the chair, my intuition tugged on my arm sleeve to ask about the purity of gold.  Is it 24k?  Umm no.  “It’s 18k.  We don’t carry 24k.”  I’d have to order it.  It usually takes a week or two.  What?!!! No!  Ruin, my birthday plans?  Waste all this anxiety I have coursing through my veins?  I need to go home victorious.  “Well, ok, come on, I have a 2 o’clock.”   It was 1:45.  My intuition said wait.  It was ok.  We would have enough willpower to come back.  Just wait and order the 24k nose ring and do this right.  My overthinking self just wanted to get to this Heart’s Desire finally.

So I disregarded my intuition, sat in the chair, took three deep breaths, and presto chango, I FINALLY had the nose ring I didn’t think I could pull off back in the 90s and still hope to get a job after college. It was beautiful.

I took such good care of it because I’m that girl, AND the Intuition that was hovering over my decision was like, “Bitch, you better be all teacher’s pet about the care of your nose because you and I both know you can’t take this 18k/surgical grade metal out your nose for another six months! The brochure and the girl said:  It’s imperative that you don’t touch, move, or replace a nose piercing until it’s fully healed. It’s recommended to wait at least six months, no matter the piercing, but the longer you give a piercing to heal, the more you can be sure it’s safe.”   I snap back with reminders of how I did P90X— twice.  I got this. And I did have it until that morning, one of those tiny loops in the texture of my towel snagged the little bastard.  It was the beginning of my nightmare. As careful as I was, I kept snagging it, one time even pulling the twist nose stud straight out of my nose!  Panic!  Panic!  I get it back in and douse my nose with extra saline that day… but Intuition told me it was about to be “I told you so.”

It began with some scar tissue on the inside of my nose first… then the outside matched my insides, and the bump formed.  Long story short, and after nearly a year of struggling with this nose ring— even at my dumbest/most stubborn, I rocked my bloody bump to a pitch meeting, hoping they thought I had a fly ruby stud in my nose— I FINALLY stopped getting advice online and from the tatted-up practitioners of piercing and saw a doctor.  She told me no amount of saline or Listerine or fresh cotton swabs could heal my nose.  She wasn’t even too sure of the ointment pumped with steroids could do the trick.  It didn’t.  I’d have to take it out permanently and admit I’m not a nose ring girl.