For almost two decades, my career has existed within the corporate world.My mornings have been spent either spewing a variety of profanity words from behind the wheel of my 8 year old Chrysler or ironically spending my most intimate moments chest to chest with strangers on the train. By the time I've made it work, I'm ready to go home.
Each day is the same. Someone will gossip about someone else. We'll all lament about how life is nothing more than indentured servitude and once our time was up we would be free but impoverished. Our bodies will go into shock after having been conditioned to work and therefore shut down and die.
It was really uplifting conversation.
We all wear the same outfits. The blouses and pants and blazers and pencil skirt and cedar colored shoes and ties and suits and make up and comb-overs and phony smiles and cruel intentions. It's pretty much a uniform. But underneath all of that, there's me.
Me is hidden. Me is who I actually am behind who I have to be from Monday thru Friday. Me shows up as soon as I got on the elevator at 5pm. No matter how long I have to work my corporate job, I have to keep in touch with me. I have to maintain a part of myself that I won't allow my career to take away. So when I got in the house and went to bed at night, I religiously insert my barbell into my tongue and go to sleep.
Why do I have this piercing? I got it when I was 16, and while I could see a life without it, by having it I feel I'm making a statement. I'm claiming a part of me that Corporate America will never take away. It doesn't stop there. Beneath my corporate costume are several tattoos. It's my little secret that lets me know who I am when I'm not answering phone calls or typing the 100th address for a mail merge.
My tattoos and tongue piercing are a quiet rebellion against all that I have to be and a source of support for all that I truly am if I were allowed just... be.
Now, even as a freelancer transitioning into self-employment, I wonder if I will ever feel comfortable to sport my piercing without reservation or fear of judgment. As I continue this journey, the answers haven't become more clear. In fact, I only have more questions. However, until I can meet a client and can chat freely and confidently with a surgical steel barbell in my mouth I will be faithfully placing it in my tongue at bedtime where I can be who I am without judgment or fear.
After all, the safest place to be who you really are is in your dreams, right? Maybe not.
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