zì xìn

So I have a tattoo that I got my freshman year of college. It was my first tattoo, and it was just after my season from hell was over. I had been thinking about this tattoo for a while, and how I wanted to go about it. I wanted to incorporate the idea of "self-confidence" into my design. I had been struggling in my life. Between my rocky relationship with my dad, living 11 hours from home in Iowa, playing on a team that I hated (except for the girls on my team), and still coping with my condition. I cried home every other day on the phone to my mom. I was miserable. I needed some confidence in myself. So I got a tattoo that said "self-confidence" in Chinese. (We had a Chinese girl on the team, who made sure the design I picked out was accurate, and didn't say something else). That is what "zì xìn" means, self-confidence.

I decided on the tattoo that is in the picture above. I know it doesn't read up to down like normal, I just thought it worked better this way. I had it put across my lower abdomen, on the right side. I thought that getting it on my body permanently, it would serve as a constant reminder to keep my head up, and not get down on myself. I would like to say it has worked, but I don't know if it has really. I don't regret it at all, I just wished it would have done more for me I guess.

But no matter what happens, I still struggle. I am very self conscious about myself. When I look in the mirror, I immediately check to see if I see any "masculine" features. I check to see whether or not I look like a girl. In that mirror, I see my body. I had lost almost 20 pounds since last summer. But with our volleyball workouts, and all our weight lifting, I have been putting on weight. I don't think it's been bad weight, because I have still been eating just about the same as I was when I was loosing weight. But when I step on that scale and I see the number higher than what i've been working towards, it hurts. 4 years ago, I weighed over 25 pounds less than what I do now. That means last summer, I weighed about 40 pounds more than I did my senior year of high school. Even though I have lost weight, and I have gained muscle mass, I still feel bad about myself. I want to be skinny again. The other thing I see when I look in the mirror is the color of my skin, or lack of color. I am pretty pale. I think its definitely a combination of things, but I think its mainly because of my heritage (my family is mostly Irish, and the rest is pretty much German). My whole family is pretty pale. But I'm not comfortable with it. Everyone always makes comments. I have found myself making comments first, so that I don't have to hear the clever comment the next person is going to make. Beating them to the punch. I try to be ok with being pale, telling myself there is nothing to e ashamed of. But in the world we live in now, if you are not tan and skinny, you don't completely "fit in". I try not to feel the urge to tan, because I am scared of getting cancer. Between having the gonads being removed (which given time, could have turned malignant), and having a tumor on my salivary gland (in my neck, which was benign), I don't want to get any other kind of cancer, like skin cancer. But I honestly wonder if tanning will kind of help me. Not only making me feel better about my skin color, and hopefully kind of taking away some of the jokes that are directed towards me, but I also wonder if it would help me feel better bout the way my body looks. I've always been told that you look skinnier if you are tan, so I wonder if that would change my mind frame.

I also have been stressing a lot about school. In high school, I was a fairly studious girl, who earned a 3.7 graduating gpa. My freshman year of college I earned a 3.8 gpa. But last semester, I took Organic Chemistry I Lab, Microbiology with a Lab, Genetics with a Lab, and Anatomy & Physiology with a Lab. I balanced all that with playing a sport in college. And I barely slipped by. Now I'm taking Organic Chemistry II with Lab, Histology with Lab, and Pathogenic Microbiology with Lab. Needless to say I have a tough semester. These classes are not a walk in the park by any means. I work hard in them to barely get by, and its just so frustrating. I hate not doing well in classes. I remember when I would cry getting a B on an exam. Now I'm ecstatic with a B. I worry about eligibility for next year. I transferred to this school to play college volleyball. Not to have to sit out. I also worry about the student loans that I have to take out to pay for these schools. And I know that I need to get a job, but the thought of carrying one right now scares me to death, because I already have to balance out all these classes and volleyball.

I worry about my dad a lot. I haven't talked to him since Thanksgiving. I don't miss him really, its not that. I just worry about his well being. I heard he has to use a walker now in order to get around. I worry about that. I worry about whether or not he is eating. I worry about whether or not he will be alive the next time I am ready to talk to him. But fact of the matter is, I'm not ready to talk to him. I don't want to talk to him. And then there is Ryan. I have been trying to be brave through our kind of long distance relationship, but it gets hard. I hate only seeing him once every week or two. I love him so much, and I just want to be with him more.

I just want to experience being stress free for a while. But I don't know how to make that happen.