When I was eight years old, I came home wearing a crop top and neon blue eye-makeup. I willingly let my best-friend, Lexi, put the makeup on me. She smeared it on my face with the passion of a Renaissance painter. I thought I looked luxurious. There was nothing wrong with wearing a belly shirt that said “Cupcake Cutiez 4 Ever.” Nothing at all. So, when I strutted into my house, like a child drag queen, my mother was stunned. She was scrubbing the dishes and she almost dropped a plate on the floor. Her purplish-red hair swung around her head as she rushed over to me. I didn’t understand why my presence was acknowledged today. Usually, I’d come home and eat cereal or burn pictures of my third-grade classmates on the stove. I didn’t see anything unusual, but any attention was good attention.
       “How may I help you, mother?” I said to her before she had time to speak.
      “You may help me by taking off the makeup and the shirt.”
      “Why? I’m cute today. Lexi said so. Her mom was speechless when she saw me.”
     “Well, I’d be speechless too if I were her.”
     “Why?” She didn’t bother to respond. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the kitchen. In a few moments, she washed my face clean and ripped the shirt from my body. I clutched my chest in my hands because I was self-conscious of my body. (I tried my mom’s Weight Watchers, but nothing seemed to get rid of my love handles and semi-flabby breasts.) I tried to protest. I swatted her hands away, but she managed to hold me down, like a patient in a mental ward. I left the kitchen as bare and vulnerable as a naked mole rat or a balding scalp.
      Looking back, my mother was probably still in shock over my budding sexuality. (Apparently, my tutu phase and Barbie obsession weren’t big enough indicators.) She wasn’t as shocked as when I put on a dress at my cousin’s communion party for twenty dollars, though. (By the way, I had to steal the money from my cousin because she refused to pay me. It was a communion party, but I felt like God would want me to have the money, so I fulfilled his wishes.) I didn’t understand why I was viewed so strangely by her and my classmates. I thought that they were just weird, when I was truly the weirdo. However, I wouldn’t realize this until a few years later when a panic attack every other day became routine.
        At the time, though, I was still enjoying being a Cupcake Cutie 4 Ever and watching pictures of my classmates burn. Life was simple.