Getting Your First Tattoo

Everyone said they were addicting, but I never understood until I got my first one.

By: Shannon Brault

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted tattoos. Prior to college, no one in my life really had tattoos, but I dreamed of putting art on my body to enhance my life and memories. My mom has never been crazy about the idea and given that my family is pretty close, I never tried to push those limits until recently. 

I have always wanted a semicolon tattoo for the Semicolon Project and a tattoo for my grandma, who died five years ago. After a year of COVID in which my brain went just about everywhere, I decided that for my 21st birthday I would get two small tattoos. This was a big deal because it was me doing something for myself, regardless of what other people thought about it, and an important step in healing from the things society has taught me to think. I am also the type of person who is hard to talk out of something after I’ve made up my mind. My parents and siblings kept telling me to think about what I really wanted because I changed up the design multiple times, but I was so determined to get something that I kept going as the idea evolved. 

I went through the consultation process, which was about a month and a half of sending emails back and forth about what I was looking for, and settled on a semicolon and my grandma’s signature. I booked the appointment for the weekend before my birthday even though it was two months away and I could have just gotten them that week. But I really wanted to celebrate my birthday by doing something for myself. 

The weekend came around and I went into the shop by myself, checked in, and waited for the artist to come out and ask me about sizing. He put the stencil on me and started inking my skin. No warning… just started needling me. I have gotten a lot of piercings and I didn’t go in expecting that level of pain or discomfort, but getting a tattoo is a very special kind of pain. My friend told me that she compares it to getting scratched by a cat over and over again in the same place, and I think that rings true. 

My appointment was supposed to be an hour and a half and the artist finished in about 45 minutes. I paid and went on my way. I had been telling all my loved ones that I planned on getting a sleeve one day, and right before I left for my appointment, my mom called after me, saying, “No sleeves.” I went home right after and said, “Yeah, that hurt. I don’t know if I’ll get a sleeve.” But two days later, I was over it and talking about all the other tattoos I was going to get.

They are truly addicting.