Oh, Yoko (Mark)

After working on drill and posting a few things to Twitter, I got away from my computer and opened my pantry. Some halo-halo would be good right about now, but, since I can't be bothered to put time or effort into what I eat, I just dumped some fruit cocktail into a bowl and plunked some ube ice cream on top of it. Now you know how to make halo-halo for lazy people.

My phone buzzed. Aside from a few Twitter notifications, I found a call from my mom. It's been a while since I've talked to her. During our last interaction, I had a total mental breakdown and said some things I shouldn't have. I don't remember exactly what either of us had said, but she stopped speaking to me for three years. Ever since then, I've been thinking less about my family than I should have, especially since I want to have one of my own.

I don't know if it's a subconscious form of rebellion against my mother, but I've always wanted the pleasure of fathering my own children. You see, I was forced to be a pageant girl from a very young age. I wasn't ever sure why, but I did remember my mother telling me "Don't ever get pregnant because it will ruin your body/take time away from your career" or something along the lines of that. If anyone was ever a stage mom, my mother Yoko Watanabe would have fit the bill.

However, as time progressed, the sweetness of the beauty pageant sickened me. I didn't feel any pleasure. I started faking sick whenever pageants came. Was I just burned out? Did I need to keep pushing through? Or was it something more? For one, I was sick of my appearance being picked apart as if I didn't have feelings. I had it better than some of the other girls, though. Some of them had to endure spray tanning sessions whereas I just had to go outside to get tan enough.

Some time during my teenage years, I really started to notice that something was off, not just with the lifestyle, but with myself. I felt disgusted by these...things on my chest. To make matters worse, I couldn't hide them. I had to be a pageant girl at every hour on every day. There was no way I could smile unless I was performing. Needless to say, I performed all the time. It continued like that until my senior year of high school when I participated in my last pageant. Although my mother wanted me to do ballet, I decided to do a flamenco routine. She claimed I looked better in a ballet tutu than a Spanish dress, but, on that day, I donned a Spanish dress as an act of rebellion.

All the curling iron burns? Stomp them into the ground.
Jealousy of my peers? Stomp that into the ground.
My mom and her quixotic standards? Stomp that into the ground.

The one thing that kept bouncing back was the feeling that my body wasn't right. I hated my curves and the dress only served to accentuate them. I hated the way my hair moved and the feeling of caked-on makeup. It wasn't me. As the music intensified, I tried harder and harder to stomp it into the ground. It didn't work, though. I shook my castanets in sync with my feet, played a bit of trumpet, and placed third in the pageant. It wasn't bad and I was incredibly proud of myself for working hard, but my mother always knew how to shatter my pride.
         "Mallory, that was disgraceful. All those years of investment and that's how you perform?" I cried so hard that my supposedly waterproof makeup streamed down my face. After that, I decided I had enough. Fed up with being paraded around like a doll, I shoved everything off my vanity, hacked my hair off with a sword, hastily threw some clothes into a bag, and got out of the house.

After a week of de facto homelessness, I found my pill bottle and swallowed everything inside of it. I got checked into a mental hospital after getting my stomach pumped. In my time at the mental hospital, my mother somehow found me and visited.
          "...Hi." I didn't know what she would say. I wrapped my chest in so many Ace bandages I felt like I was choking.
          "Why did you do this, Mallory? Don't you love me?" I completely fell apart. I started building my identity as "M" and then "Mark" and my mother had the nerve to completely shatter it. I cut my hair, starved myself so I wouldn't have my period, and worked out like I was training for a marathon. What do I have to do to be a man in her eyes?
          "You loved me as your daughter, but I'm your son now." After that, I screamed some things that I now regret. I was tempted to hang up, but I reconsidered it. I am not who I was in that hospital. I've grown, changed, and evolved into someone completely different.

I picked up the phone and said "This is Mark."