[Mekatra]

Your tattoo experience was so different than my own. I have seven tattoos, one of them an unfortunately so far uncolored full back piece. While some of them were rather painful, most of them were more than tolerable. My worst piece is the last one I've gotten. It is a hyena and a raven on my arm. It was only a three hour session but it felt like I was getting my arm hacked off, which was weird for me because I had never had a session like that.

Yeah, it hurts since you have a needle going into your skin, but jeeze that was the worst experience. Since that was the first tattoo I had gotten from that artist I started asking other people if they had noticed his sessions hurting a bit more and they all agreed that he seemed a little more heavy handed than others they had gone to in the past, so I won't be going back to him. So it may have just been that particular artist's technique that made it hurt so badly for you.

You might also just have a very low tolerance for that type of pain. If you're serious about wanting more tattoos in the future and don't think you can handle the pain you might look into products like Hush. It's a topical lotion that helps numb the skin a bit so the artist can work with you feeling it a bit less. My roommate swears by the stuff every time she gets work done. Just make sure you bring the bottle and that the artist is okay with you using it. Some artists won't because if you have some kind of weird reaction or something they don't want to get blamed (and there are cases of people doing just that.)