Happy Birthday To You

The tattoo turned 14 yesterday and I forgot to wish it a happy birthday. Probably because it was the first time I've worn long sleeves since May. 14, that's old (relatively). I remember when I turned 14, it was a seriously formative year for me. MTV was still cool, worth watching. It was different back then, it showed music videos. Being the mid-90s it showed quite a lot of good music videos. Good is obviously subjective, but it showed music I liked. I used to spend hours watching MTV... I don't think my tattoo has ever watched MTV, definitely not for music.

When I was 14 I'd say Nirvana were still my favourite band. It was also around the time I started getting into Nine Inch Nails and from there, Industrial music. I've been listening to a lot of 90s music lately. Either a coincidence or my tattoo is aging the way I did and is forcing me to listen to the music I liked when I was its age. I'd say the latter is more likely. I had initially thought that my tattoo must be the first 14 year old I've ever wanted to blast off of the earth with a laser, but I doubt that's true. I suspect that when I was 14, there were quite a few people I'd have liked to blast off of the earth with a laser.

My current goal is that the tattoo doesn't get to turn 15. I didn't think it would make it to 14 but that was seriously naive of me. Tattoos aren't easy to remove. I worked out that I have 43 weeks left on my current schedule of laser sessions. That's assuming they stay at an eight week frequency. They might space them apart more to allow it fade better. I've paid for another 5 sessions already I'm just not sure if he'll want to do them all as soon as reasonable or if he'll want to space them out further.

I'm still both happy and unhappy with how its going. I do think Picosure is worth paying for. While I wish it was fading faster, I do think I'm seeing better results from it that I had with previous sessions. My next session is scheduled for Oct 13 but I'm getting really impatient. I need to remind myself that the healing time is probably more important than the number of sessions. It's just tedious. I'd like to say that if I'd known tattoo removal was such a long process I wouldn't have gotten the tattoo, however I know that's nonsense. Even after I got this one, I had planned on getting more. Thankfully I was a student and didn't have the time or money.

Anyway, that's the bleakest birthday writing that I've done since I was about 14. I think the biggest difference between me and my tattoo being 14 is that the world started to really open up for me when I was 14 and its starting to end for my tattoo. Almost fitting that it's coming into Winter and it will be covered for most of the days. Hopefully by next summer when it's t-shirt weather again and I have my 14th birthday (for the 22nd time) the tattoo will be at best a few blotches of ink on my arm.