Yolk

by Mary H.K. Choi

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.

What’s the point? The planet is on fire and everything is random.

I’ve never met a single person whose job I can remotely admire.

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.

Whatever this feeling is, I never want to feel it again.

my life doesn’t ever feel like it fits.

I couldn’t even tell if I wanted to be with him or be him.

it was best to be sort of afraid of friends, to have a sword of Damocles hanging over you. To have tension where all parties had something to lose.

“Do you ever look at your parents and wonder why they make their lives so hard?”

I’m never going to fully understand them. And it’s fucked up because that means they’re never going to understand me.

So far, I don’t particularly excel at adult things.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m confused by how purposeful they are. They’re so sure they want sex that I try to convince myself I must be wrong about my ambivalence.

I couldn’t understand why everything was a secret. Why everything I knew about my mom was ill gotten.

“It’s when you really don’t want to ask for help that you might need it the most.”

Control feels good no matter how small the triumph.

Jesus, men are exhausting.

“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

I feel like I don’t have a home.”

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 feel like I’m out of control.”

It’s the people who will become a home for you.”

But she smiles and thanks the room and says she knows it will get better because it has so many times before.