By Rebecca Smyth
@rebsmyth

I position my back to the door of the piercing studio while my husband, Paddy, takes the before photo. A simple shot from the shoulders up, I hope, but I won’t be surprised if he snaps a zoomed-in portrait of only my nose. 

He turns the phone screen around to get my approval, and the heavy Belfast rain plops on my screen. Despite the obscured image, my face shows exactly how I feel. Which is to say, scared out of my mind. Which is also to say, like a lady about to chicken out. 

“Well, here I go,” I say, not going. 

“Reb, you’ve given birth three times—you’ll be grand.” 

I hover in the deserted red-brick alleyway, our two youngest boys getting restless under the rain cover of the double buggy.

“Yeah, but my body was designed to have babies. My nose, however, was not designed to have a needle shot through it,” I say, not missing a beat, repeating the same answer I gave my friends last night. 

Paddy rolls his eyes, gives me a peck on the lips and shoos me away. He watches me scurry in the door before disappearing for a walk.

When my friends were experimenting with fun piercings as teenagers, I was already a mother. And I considered my life itself an act of resistance against the trashy teen-mum stereotype. To look more mature, I wore modest dresses with black tights. Every. Single. Day. 

And even in my most sleep-deprived moments, I would not be seen within a five-mile radius of a pair of cosy jogging bottoms, lest someone think I didn’t have it all together. There was no room for vulnerability when a whole world was waiting to be proved wrong. A nose piercing was too irresponsible, too noticeable—and the baby on my hip was already sabotaging my mission to blend in. 

A decade later, the desire to pierce my nose is a craving that won’t quit. So, I gifted myself permission to do it on my thirtieth birthday—to do something permanent and visible and fun, just for me. 

But today, more than a year before that big birthday, on an insignificant grey Saturday afternoon with nowhere else to be, I have decided I’m doing it. I’m running on some serious Big YOLO Energy™ and that’s what finally carries me into the piercing shop.

***

For as long as I can remember, my mum has told the story of how she wanted to be a nurse. But at sixteen, she had to step up as the mother of her household after her own mother left the country with another man. My mum got a clerical job, and an older friend taught her how to cook for her dad and siblings.

“That first Christmas, my turkey was so dry no one could eat it,” she always concludes with a chuckle. “But we all have to start somewhere.” 

She tells the story without a hint of bitterness. She has long made peace with her beloved mum and has been invaluable at any workplace she’s set foot in.

But let this be known: my mum is still the nurse-iest person I have ever met. As a child, I was besotted with the idea that, in a different universe, she got to live out her dream. I wanted that for her so badly. I have spent a lifetime longing for a creator of the universe who is in control, so I don’t have to be, and then constantly telling him to do it differently. 

I am still a sucker for a multiverse story. Give me any movie or novel set against the backdrop of multiple universes where multiple versions of ourselves co-exist. Don’t ask me to explain the quantum physics theory, but I love the idea that every time we flip a coin, and it comes up heads, there is another universe where it comes up tails. Or every time we come to a fork in the road, there is another version of us taking the alternative path. 

There is a universe where my bachelor’s degree is in English instead of Theology and another where I am still a single parent living with my parents. Maybe, somewhere, I have three daughters who dote on their dad, but also, I live in London with two Dalmatians. If we must be realistic, there is probably a universe where depression wins, but also there might be one where I get tickets to the Eras tour. I hope there are universes where no one cares if I identify as British or Irish, and surely there is a world where I have short hair with bangs (but rest assured, there is no universe where my hair is its natural colour). In a terrifying version of my life, I stayed in the toxic relationship I was in before I met my now-husband. And in another, I got to punch that ex-boyfriend in the face. 

In my mind, the variables and forests of forking paths are endless, except for one factor: in every universe, I am a mother.

***

The decision to book a piercing appointment started with an index finger jammed in the double buggy. Obviously. 

In an attempt to hustle everyone in and out of the shop as fast as possible before school, I flipped the buggy open and folded my finger in the catch between two metal bars. It felt like a low-key Final Destination scene, an intrusive thought brought to life. I expected to look down and see my finger on the pavement beside someone’s discarded shopping receipt and a half-eaten croissant. 

I don’t know how but eventually I was set free by my ten-year-old who, thankfully, afforded me the dignity of looking away while I doubled over on the ground and screamed silent expletives into my knees. 

When I stopped huffing and puffing, I immediately thought, well, that’s my violin career over. And then I walked into the shop with my gaggle of children like nothing happened, reflexively wrapping my left hand around the neck of an invisible violin. My finger did not move. 

What you should know is, I haven’t played the violin in ten years. I took my final violin exam in my last year of school, and I hadn’t planned on taking it any further. But I could have—if I’d been willing to work hard. If I hadn’t taken my kaleidoscope of options for granted. 

I didn’t know everything I still wanted to be until I became a mother. Until motherhood became everything. I didn’t know a mother could feel effervescent at who she has become—more alive than ever—whilst also carrying a million tiny griefs for who she hasn’t. 

***

The thing I’m noticing about my friends as we inch closer to thirty is how at home they are in themselves. 

They know who they are and whose they are, where they belong, and what lights them up. Instead of coasting through, they’ve done the gritty work that leads to growth. They aren’t afraid to dream and pivot or prioritise fun. They are steady, no longer unmoored by insecurity or the opinions of others. And their previously wallpapered souls have been stripped bare, all pretence peeled away.  

I look at the women they’ve become, and I think it’s the greatest gift—to know who you do and don’t want to be. What I mean is, I’ve been a mother my whole adult life, and I’ve never really had time to ask myself that question. 

I have been adrift in survival mode, constantly searching for somewhere safe and dry to land. I hear other women talk about losing themselves after having babies, about trying to find themselves again, and I think, I don’t even know who I’m looking for. Like sea glass hidden in the shore bed, I’m treasure hunting for the pieces of myself I haven’t yet met. 

I am more okay than ever with the fact that motherhood has shaped every part of who I am, that it pumps through my veins. But I’m beginning to wonder if it’s possible to be a mother who plays the violin and loves taking photographs and cooks with her husband, just for fun. A mother who waters the seeds planted in her adolescence, swimming and painting and learning French. A mother who exercises in the morning, goes to counselling in the evening and learns to make her favourite cocktails in between. A mother who knows herself. A mother who chooses one universe and vows to love being alive in it. 

Of course, a person is more than the sum of their likes and dislikes, but these things are not meaningless either. These are the recipe ingredients for a woman who is okay with who she didn’t get to be, but excited about who she is becoming. 

***

When the lovely and not-scary-at-all piercing man holds the humongous needle up to my face, I close my eyes and breathe in one, two, three, four, and out, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. He senses my nerves and asks about my plans for the day. 

I know his tactics but still, I’m grateful. I begin telling him my eldest son is spending the weekend with his grandparents, and then, in one sharp swoop followed by a throbbing nip, it’s done. 

“That’s it,” he says, far too casually, as if to make a point. 

When I leap at the mirror, I stand there staring and staring and staring, because I love it. I cannot remember the last time I looked at my reflection and thought, I love it. My eyes are watering from a pinch of pain but a dollop of pride. Because I Did The Thing. 

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” I say to the piercing artist as I say goodbye, my voice coming out more like a squawk.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” I say to the receptionist on my way out the door.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” I say to Paddy as he wraps me in his arms.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” I say to myself and to my twenty-nine-year-old self and to my eighteen-year-old self because each version is still a piece of me. 

Guest essay written by Rebecca Smyth. Reb is a Northern Irish storyteller, wife and unlikely mum of three sons. After becoming a mother at eighteen, and at a time of feeling lost, she found her words. She says writing is her way of seeing God in her life and she hopes that maybe, through her stories, you might see him in yours too. In this season she is happiest on a slow Saturday morning with her boys or writing alone in her car with a drive-thru coffee—where most of this essay was written. Connect with Rebecca on Substack and Instagram.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.