Yolk

by Mary H.K. Choi

And please know that there is no such thing as a bad body. Truly. Take up space, it is your birthright.

I find that the more I hide, the more presentable I am to the world.

I know that attending college is like praying to God. It’s not that you believe in it; you do it just in case. Because other people are.

She said that there was more than one type of perfectionist. And that I qualified because the kind of perfectionist I was, was the kind that abandoned everything if I wasn’t good enough at it. And that’s why I couldn’t finish tasks.

Meanwhile, I thought you had to be Natalie Portman from Black Swan to be a perfectionist, all shivering from malnourishment and eighteen-hour practices, but she’s right. I’d rather fail outright than be imperfect.

“Knowing that we don’t know everything leaves room for mindfulness. It opens up the possibility that thoughts and feelings can change. Perception is a lot more subjective than anyone feels in the moment.”

There’s this whole theory that younger siblings are spoiled. That we’re enfeebled from all the mollycoddling. Soft. That by the time it was our turn to rebel, our parents had already given up. I disagree with this wholly. It’s firstborns who can’t take no for an answer. Youngest kids have iron constitutions. Hardy hides from lifetimes of rejection. A hundred million entreaties for their older siblings to hang out answered by shoves, eye rolls, slammed doors, and stone-cold ditches with peals of laughter.

“Who has time for whole movies? I’ve seen clips. I love the soundtrack. I get the idea.”

The totality of death is inconceivable. It’s intolerable that you’re completely, utterly, irrefutably alive, filled up with decades of inside jokes, goofy facial expressions, all the love of your family, and then not.

“Fernweh. Noun. Origin: German. Translated as wanderlust but more literally, far woe. Or, far pain. Longing for a distant place. Could be characterized as a homesickness for somewhere you’ve never been before.”

Sisters never stand a chance to be friends. We’re pitted against each other from the moment we’re born. A daughter is a treasure. Two is a tax.

I may as well be the twin that’s absorbed in the womb. I’m too scared to talk about it, but sometimes I worry that I don’t exist. That I don’t count.

Mom thinks anxiety is about as insufferably first world as it gets. Like lactose intolerance. She thinks it’s an idle mind searching for things to bitch about at the lack of famine or war. If you’ve got a full belly, you’ve lost your right to bellyache.

“As the kids of immigrants, we always have to think about that whole ‘I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams’ thing. I know my parents made sacrifices, but I also don’t understand their choices. Like, uprooting their lives three times for me and my sister’s schooling. And my dad gives so much money to his abusive brother, who we have to pretend isn’t a narcissist and psychopath because he’s the firstborn or some shit. There’s so much that goes into the collectivist mind-set, considering the good of the whole before prioritizing yourself, but sometimes it’s like, give it a rest already. Just set a boundary and break some patterns once in a while.”

It’s crazy how lonely it is to be in a family. Even if the stuff with my mom didn’t happen, even if everyone was super evolved and therapized, I think just being in a family is what screws you up. I’m never going to fully understand them. And it’s fucked up because that means they’re never going to understand me.

Mom’s love language is to scrutinize and criticize all the physical attributes that you’re most sensitive

about.

“Because being in a family is about doing shit you don’t want to for the benefit of other people,” she says. “Mom and Dad sacrificed everything for us, and they want the stupidest, basic shit in return.”

“Every time someone hurts you, you find a way to hurt yourself ten times worse.”

I wonder if that’s what June’s been doing all along in plain sight. Hiding her vulnerabilities so as not to be a burden.

I feel like crying. If I lived here, I would be so happy. It’s not even that I want to move in with Patrick. It’s that his house feels like a home in a way I’ve never experienced in New York. The pictures on the walls, the impractical number of books, the stupid avocado egg timer. It’s festooned with personal effects. Nobody’s leaving anytime soon. It feels like a place where people want to stay.

“It’s not at all what I thought it would be. Nothing is. No matter how much I love it, it doesn’t love me back. If I weren’t so broken, it would fit. I feel like I don’t have a home.”

“Fernweh is rooted in pain, or sickness and sadness,” says Gina. “It’s directly translated as ‘far pain’ or ‘far sickness’ as opposed to ‘heimweh’ or ‘homesickness.’ But it’s also longing for the unknown, since the familiar is stifling or challenging. The foreign can seem fantastic, exalted, since its possibilities are infinite. We have no data or experience around it. But once we arrive and the faraway is known and becomes familiar, then what? You’ve got all that energy and longing and possibility that no longer has anywhere to go. It’s got nowhere to be invested, nowhere to live. Have you ever considered that it isn’t a place that will improve your life? That there is no such thing as a geographic cure?”

I’m thrilled at the devastation. Destroying beautiful things so carelessly and so fast.

Humans need to share their darkest parts. Unburdening makes you closer to everyone. There’s that thing that all addicts have, that you’re a piece of shit in the center of the universe. That everybody’s obsessed with the ways you fall short. But the truth is, we all have the same, boring problems. Sometimes the best thing you can do is talk about it. It makes no sense, but glory if it doesn’t work like a charm.

I have wasted my entire life focusing on the wrong things and the wrong people. I don’t know how it came to be that I believed changing everything about me would change the way people treated me. I thought a polished appearance and stellar behavior would be the passport to belonging. And when I inevitably failed at perfection, I could at least willfully do everything in my power to be kicked out before anyone left me.