Immaculate Conception

by Ling Ling Huang

It was the first day of four years of classes, and everyone wanted to prove they had nothing to learn.

Or maybe I was just so insecure that anyone with a strong sense of identity could destabilize me.

I suppose it made them feel better to refuse, rather than to admit they didn’t have anything to offer me.

“Don’t lose yourself,” my mom said. But I couldn’t wait to lose the person I’d been.

If someone tried their hardest to mimic another person, their unique life experiences and skills would still yield completely different results.”

I had truly believed that if you worked hard enough, with enough creativity and dedication, it was possible to make your way to a greener pasture where everyone made pieces from a place of love and introspection.

Not too many women can succeed at one time…just enough to make the rest of us hungry, to believe it’s possible.

I picked at my right thumb cuticle until it bled, and sucked on it to stanch the flow.

I remembered the satisfaction of being frustrated in the pursuit of an artistic ideal.

Now we had to constantly prove our exceptionalism, racing ahead of technology’s ever-reaching grasp.

There was a cultural obsession with the possibility of multiverses, but to me, social media was proof enough of their existence. With a flick of a finger, you could see every life you could have had if only you’d been born smarter or luckier, or made better choices.

It seemed like the only power I had in the world was this: that I could withhold myself from someone who wanted to see me, even though I desperately wanted to see her, too.

I was treading water in my career; getting married seemed like a good way to keep moving. To feel productive in a way that society recognized.

To think that distance could be one-sided? Of course our relationship had changed for her, too.

I started to cry. Not because I was happy, but because it felt, as always, like everyone else was looking at Mathilde.

What an unbelievable scam it is to get everything you’ve been told to want.

Is my inability to play related to my inability to be a great artist?

She seemed to be reacting to that joy with the rigorous control of someone who was afraid of losing it.

The realization that the person I’ve most truly loved in this world knows the full extent of my ugliness.

Being seen forces me to see myself, and I break under the weight of my gaze.

To me, she was the moon, and I, the tide, alternately lapping at her bright milky feet and receding toward the dark shore.

A continuation of this peace is all I wish for. All my life I had chased after it, thinking it was something I needed to find or earn, instead of something to receive and accept.

I grieve myself—the art I might have made if I hadn’t always seen it through the lens of someone else, framed by other standards.