Undergraduate / Permanent Tattoos-Supplement Essay [3]

Option 3 - Using the quotation below as a jumping off point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world:

''Some questions cannot be answered./ They become familiar weights in the hand,/ Round stones pulled from the pocket, unyielding and cool.''1
- Jane Hirshfield, poet, Princeton Class of 1973

Permanent Tattoos

It was like the waking up to the chicken pox. First, the feeling of lighting lightly dancing on the epidermis would cause little fingers to tingle with the need to claw at every inch of the body. Then, eyes would open to see overgrown bumps that were the likely cause of the itchiness. Finally, joy would fill the heart because a chicken pox infected body meant no school. Yes, it was just like waking up to the chicken pox; there was the light lighting and the red bumps, but unlike with the chicken pox there was not a sense of joy that overcame me. Instead it was fear; fear because I had already had the chicken pox years ago.

That morning after a minor freak out, I shoved my arm in my mother's face. After a few glances, she finally asked what she was supposed to be looking for. "Don't you see them?" I asked, "Look again!" Even after rolling up my pants to show her my legs, she still failed to see what I saw. So instead of snuggling back into bed, I put on a turtle neck shirt, and pair of jeans. During the school day, my mind wondered from the chalkboard to underneath my sleeves. After looking around, I pulled up my sleeve and rubbed my finger tips over the dots. Frowning at them the questions of "what is this rash," and "will it go away," plagued me. My attention shifted back to the chalkboard as I heard the teacher muttering obscenities about disruptive kids. "It's probably just eczema," I thought and floated through the rest of the day.

In the middle of the night my eyes snapped open. That burning sensation that I felt sure was not light lighting, and not the feel of eczema, and the bumps had turned into an angry rash. I do not remember much of that night except for laying the floor with a white powder covering my body. From that day, I spent a year of my life with itchiness and with covering my skin so people would not give that "sick child" stare. They tell you not to scratch when you get the chicken pox, but the temptation is too much; it was the same with my rash. My mom's itch was to find a solution to the rash and to maintain the last bits of suppleness of my skin. From the inconclusive doctor trips and the different types of lotions, my mom never gave up on my skin. Unlike my mother, my itch was not much of a "how" but a "what." Once the itchiness of the rash had stopped, my curiosity for it grew.

I read somewhere once that people who have yet to organize issues in their mind reflect it with tangible messes. I use this to explain why I began to dodge my mom's attempts to smear latest lotions on my skin. I still needed the physical evidence. I was so obsessed with finding a name to a face that it was not surprising that curiosity and determination for my skin seeped into other areas of my life. Eight years later and still no answer, made me skeptical if I would ever find one. And sometimes when absently I rub my skin in comfort, I wonder if I ever want one.

Thanks for the help in advance. My essay needs to shorther and it needs more umpt. I'm trying to make a connection on how my hunt for a answer for my skin problem influnced my determination in other areas and since there is no seen answer for my skin problem my determination will remain and grow.