Yolk

by Mary H.K. Choi

I pocket the credit card and fake ID. It’s funny how no one ever notices that the names don’t match. And that the photo isn’t my face. Partly it’s that they don’t expect criminals to look like me, an Asian art student dressed in black, but it also confirms a horrible suspicion: that no one’s ever looking at me. Really looking.

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

You could get away with anything if no one cared enough to check. Far away from my family for the first time, I learned that everything was profoundly optional. So I opted out.

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.

They call New York tap water the champagne of water.

Cancer must feel like such betrayal, knowing that somewhere deep in your body you’re manufacturing tiny bombs that detonate and catch fire.

There’s also a container from Domino’s Pizza. In New York. We live in the town with the best slices in the world and my sister is ordering Domino’s Pizza. If there were ever an indication that your sibling was unwell, it’s this.

“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.”

Oh my God. What did I ever do to him? Honestly, what kind of psychopath sets read receipts on?

It was that or the lesser-known movie Hyo, a word that non-Koreans can barely pronounce, a term that means “duty” or “filial piety,” this super-slavish devotion to doing well by your forebears, to do your parents’ bidding, often at the cost of your own dreams.

It’s funny. Even though our parents are together, it’ll always be Mom’s house.

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 imagine myself as an entirely different person. Someone new. Someone strong. Someone whole.

The funny thing about having an older sibling play babysitter is that you’re only vaguely aware that they’re also a child.

He said he wanted to see me for lunch before my flight, but I preferred to remain deeply offended yet demonstrably chill on text. “It’s work!” I’d told him zestily. “It happens!” He should have known how sad I was from the exclamation points.

“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.”

June says that however badly people treat me, I treat myself worse. She doesn’t get that there’s a certain logic to it. When I had my wisdom teeth pulled last year, I couldn’t stop rooting in the metallic socket, dislodging the blood clot with my tongue, exposing all the nerves. The pain had been so stunning and clear. It was both precise and expansive. I like that I could control when that zip of agony coursed through my head. It made everything and everyone else so quiet.

“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.” My voice breaks. Hearing myself say it strikes me as so sad, so pathetic, so lonesome that I burst into tears.

“I’m just wrong,” I tell her raggedly. “I have, like, fernweh for myself. Or something.”

you’re only as sick as your secrets.

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.