Holy sh*t ew

So as most of you know, I've been stretching my ears since around the end of January. I've wanted stretched ears (plugs, tunnels, those types of things) for a really long time, so I was really excited to finally be able to do that.

From the beginning, I wasn't very careful about stretching them. I'm not careful about anything, and that's a legitimate problem. I immediately went from a 16-14g to a 10g. Just for reference...
 this is a 16g:

And this is a 10g:

It may not look like that big of a stretch, but that's skipping three fucking sizes, and my ears bled like a virgin bride. It really hurt and I didn't clean anything. How my ears survived that, I do not know. 

After that, I stretched my ears less stupidly, but still pretty stupidly. I never cleaned my ears, which is like the equivalent of taking a shit and not wiping your ass afterwards. The thing is, my body has, like, magical healing powers. I've pierced my ears several times without cleaning the needle or my ear, and I never had  a problem at all. Essentially, I was being a stubborn little shit because my ears hadn't imploded in on themselves yet.

So last saturday, I decided I wanted to stretch my ears from a 4g to a 2g. 

4g:

 2g:

However, in all my stupidity, I only have one taper (big spikey thing as depicted in the pictures above) in each size, so I can only stretch one ear at a time. I decided to stretch my left ear, as it's usually my more lenient ear anyway. So, on saturday morning, I took my germ covered, nasty 2g taper, covered it in nasty ass burt's bees hand salve, and stuck it in my unwashed, shitty ear. It hurt like an actual bitch. It felt like how I'm pretty sure it would feel to have a large black cock in your ass without lube for your first experience with buttsex. 

What I'm trying to depict is that it hurt. However, I wasn't worried. Stretching your ears does hurt quite a bit, but the pain usually goes away after an hour tops. That's why I was a little bit concerned when, at ten PM that night, my ear was still really sore and throbbing as if it had its own cardiovascular system. I still didn't do anything about it of course. I was just too stubborn and, to put it eloquently, stupid, to do that.

The next day, my ear was still really red and it hurt pretty bad. But the thing is, it didn't look gross. It was just a little swollen. There was no crusty shit or blood or anything. I took that as a good sign. I should not have done that.

Throughout sunday, I kept trying to move around the taper that was in my ear. Usually, after your ears calm down a bit after they're stretched, the taper will start to fit more and you can kinda twist it around and pull on it and stuff. I couldn't do that at all. My ear was so swollen, I couldn't move the taper around at all. My earlobe had a death grip on it. If I tried to push on the front of the taper a little to see if it would slide through my ear, everything would just be like 

NO

STAHP

WAT R U DOIN

U NO DO DAT

STAAHHPP

*THROB THROB THROB*

Despite this, I still thought my ear would be fine. I kept the taper in my ear, even though it was über painful and swollen to the point where it appeared that I'd been attacked by a really big, angry bee that particularly despised earlobes. 

That night, I couldn't sleep, because my ear hurt so bad. It was getting numb and only more swollen. Finally, I begrudgingly stomped over into my bathroom and sat on the countertop in front of the mirror. My plan was to take out the 2g taper, put back in a 4g plug, and try again later. My ear had other plans.

As I mentioned earlier, I could not move around the taper. My ear had clamped down on it because of the swelling and I could barely touch it without spiraling into a fit of owwy-induced rage. Now, prior to the actual attempt to remove the taper, I thought once I got it out of my ear, my earlobe would just be red and swollen for a while. I WAS SO WRONG. SO VERY, VERY WRONG.

After a good minute or two of wiggling the taper around in a sad attempt to loosen it up, I finally got it to scoot forward in my ear a bit. I would feel accomplished about this, if not for the sickening tidal wave of pink, bloody puss that immediately began to pour from my ear. My earlobe was doing its best impression of what happens when you stab an elephant in the jugular with a carton of milk and I did not appreciate it. And, by "did not appreciate it," I mean I was freaking the fuck out because I was rapidly losing a lot of blood and it hurt and there was puss everywhere and I was entirely convinced in that moment that I was going to have to amputate my own ear. 

It was horrifying. I ran to my kitchen, got our bottle of hydrogen peroxide (why we keep hydrogen peroxide in the kitchen, I do not know) and ran back to my bathroom, immediately soaking my ear in the stuff. It started fizzing on my ear, which is hydrogen-peroxidian for you done fucked up.

After around an hour of nursing my poor, infected ear in hydrogen peroxide, I was still bleeding, but it felt a little better because I didn't have a huge ass piece of oddly shaped acrylic jewelry in it. 

As of today, two days later, my ear has closed up almost entirely. It still hurts a bit, and it's all scabby and gross. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to re-pierce it and start all over. But, I am not discouraged in the least. In fact, I'm actually kinda excited. I now have proof that I am a superhuman, because I fought off a major infection with my own immune system, some chemicals, and nothing else. I am invincible. Fuck you, inevitable pandemic that will one day wipe out humanity, I survived an earlobe infection. You can't fuck me up.

But for realsies, the moral of this post is:

Because when you don't clean stuff, especially when engaging in the body modifications, you're gonna get poked right in the butthole with a two-by-four.