At the age of twelve, it become apparent to my mother’s horror, that she had produced society’s at once most prized and most horrific creature: the pretty girl. I stood out as a kind of avant-garde species amidst the homogeneity of the Midwest; thanks to my half Asian heritage, I was slight of build, had thick, shiny hair and delicate hands, but I was also “white” looking enough, with a curvy chest, almond eyes and full lips, to meet the American standard of beauty. I was as socially adept as a twelve year old can be, I was considerate and I genuinely liked people, and for these reasons, I made a lot of friends very quickly when I started middle school. I was everything my mother had not been, and ever since I entered the seventh grade, she has hated me for it.

I spent time on the phone when I should have been practicing piano, I went to the mall when I should have been on student council, I brushed my hair when I should have been curing cancer. I would find cookies in the linens drawer and boxes of chocolate with in the vacuum cleaner closet where my mother had hidden them, claiming that if I had access to these high calorie snacks, I would gain weight, loose my looks and ultimately end up with nothing. I was lazy, she would screech, cared about no one but myself, I was shallow, superficial, I was every synonym in the dictionary for empty.

No one, at the age of twelve, has the eloquence to apologize for being born looking like a Hollister model, much less the language skills to explain to the school counselor the hazy grey creature that had begun to stalk me wherever I went, dulling my eyes and suffocating me when I tried to sleep at night.

At too young of an age I let boys take my clothes off and kiss the corners of my lifeless eyes, and when I parted my small lips to return the favor, my grey pet wriggled into my mouth, down my throat and made a home around my ribcage where it’s been living ever since.

I needed my mother, but she built barriers with bricks of her pride in concrete foundations of society’s idea that hand in hand with physical attractiveness comes happiness.

So when I was thirteen and I accidentally broke a pencil sharpener during French class, I turned to my wrist and decided to start cutting myself.

I prized the mild disfigurements that I etched into my body’s extremities like other thirteen year olds prized their abercrombie wardrobes, all of us naught but indulging the creatures we so badly wanted to become. And even in the summer, when I rolled up the sweaty sleeves of Hollister smelling cardigans to the appalled face of my then-boyfriend, it wasn’t him whose fear and discomfort I wanted to relish, but my mothers. When Connor came to my doorstep and declared that he could no longer commit to seeing me, I knew, even if it was only later that he confessed this to me, that it was him and not my mother who had been the first to knock teeth with the creature I was inside. For me, being pretty was always a wishy washy half desire, half burden, as it was deemed such a crime by my mother and a winning ticket in the lottery of society that dragged along expectations of femininity and poise. Today, I continue to attempt to explode out of the symmetrical vessel I’ve constructed around my soul via more socially acceptable outlets like smoking tobacco and ripping apart my cuticles, self destruction as a ceaseless, animal need by my subconscious to become the monster I am inside.