Picture this: a young kid, around 11 or 12. She’s sitting in the living room at her grandparents’ house with her family, having a conversation.
Well.
She’s more listening to the multitude of phrases in Cantonese getting thrown around the room like a ball in gym class. They’re talking about things they’ve heard on the news, random gossip. It’s pretty boring for her until, hey-o, their attention turns to her.
Oh, here we go again.
It starts off nice, with some compliments. The laughter in the room echoes in her brain and she feels the need to curl up into a ball and hide until it’s over. The conversation slowly turns the room into a glass case where she is the subject stuck inside and they are there to judge her.
“Y’know, if you don’t gain any more weight you should be good.”
What? What the hell is that supposed to mean? She didn't feel that big.
“Yeah, ’cause you want to get taller, not wider,” they say as they laugh.
She nervously chuckles and looks down so they don’t notice the hurt coming through in her dark brown eyes.
“I remember when you were little and you had a flat stomach.”
Yes, I gained weight. It’s called baby fat. What are you going to do about it? Talking about it like it’s not going to bother me at all certainly doesn’t burn it off now, does it?
They finally move on to talking about other uninteresting things and she’s feeling defeated. She feels sadness and frustration growing inside her and she’s wondering— am I not pretty enough?
But she is.
Fast-forward a few years. She’s in the middle of high school, it’s the end of the day and her dad is there to pick her up. She just received her report card a couple of days ago. Her parents glanced at it without her knowing.
She gets in the car. Hey, Dad.
You hungry?
No.
Okay.
There’s not a lot of words being exchanged but enough to keep a conversation. The air feels dead to her and it’s pretty awkward, but it’s not like she wants to say anything.
“So, we looked at your report card.”
Oh. Well, shit. Didn’t get to the mail fast enough it seems. He wasn’t supposed to see it.
“You have some 80s and that’s okay….”
Goddamn it. Let’s not bring up the marks, please. The stress of trying to do well is enough. She already feels like an idiot for not knowing things right away in class.
She sits there silently staring at the intersection in front of her and she feels her heart sink and crack. There was nothing about that day that was worse than what she’d just heard. She wanted to be more than “okay.” She wanted to impress her parents. Even “good” would’ve been better than “okay.”
Better luck next time. Rest in pieces, heart.
Was the equivalent of an A not enough?
Yes, it was. But she doesn’t know that.
Here she is now: a graduating student at her school, along with the rest of them. She feels like maybe she accomplished something, but she’s not sure. To be honest, she isn’t really sure of what she should be feeling. It’s been the same for all those years in school: you do your work, you acquire the knowledge to become an intelligent human being, you get by. You look pretty, you make friends and be a social butterfly, you get by. Ho hum.
But she doesn’t feel pretty, let alone intelligent. Can’t even go a day without feeling the slightest bit insecure. Like, does her hair look good? Is her makeup smearing? Why is there so much oil on her face? She covers her work when she’s in class so the teacher won’t see it because she thinks it’s going to be wrong even though she’s fine. God forbid a wrong answer when it’s forgivable, right? There’s never a moment in a day when she doesn’t have all those memories of her family telling her about her flaws or the simple “okay” that forever echoes in the back of her brain. It doesn’t go away and the feeling of inadequacy haunts her every second.
“We’re proud of you and we love you in our own way,” my mother explains.
But I don’t believe her one bit.