How to Love

Miss. America

*warning* sensitive subjects and family trauma

Nyla
Yep, this is how I wanted to start my day. My package tracker have been telling me that my order was delivered. I've searched pretty much every inch of my apartment complex before they finally told me that they dropped it off at my mother house. I haven't used that address in years why would it go there? Stupid delivery company. I spent a pretty penny on this air fryer and I'm not letting her have it.

Now I get the unfortunately pleasure of dealing with this woman. I just know she brought my package in the house just to make me talk to her. That's just something she would do.

Me and my mother have never gotten along. Thanks to her I've never experience a real childhood. All I knew is pageants.

Some people think of pageants and think of little pink dresses and make up. I think of me being on a diet my whole life and was never able to eat sweets, later in life developing a eating disorder. I think of the intense work out schedule I had since just 4 years old. I think of the emotional trauma and thinking 'am I pretty enough?' I think of the long nights of me crying and forcing myself to throw up so I can still fit in a drees. I think of the pressure and expectations of it all. Looking at myself in the mirror at 7 and hating what I seen because it wasn't enough to win. Hating myself every time I didn't win because I knew what came with that.

It's not the glammed up happy situation that TLC plays it out to be. It is nothing but trauma.

When I didn't win my mother went off on me really bad. Telling me that I'm not pretty enough and that I need to eat less to look better. She made sure I knew that me winning was the only thing keeping us off the streets. She didn't have a job, she depended on my looks to make us money. She would tell me how I should practice more even though I would miss days in school to practice. I have such ugly feet from all of those years walking in heals.

To make it all worse she only gave birth to me because she thought I would be really pretty. I was nothing but a fetish to her. She found some random Blaxican(African-American mixed with Mexican) man and made sure to get pregnant. I've never seen my father, I'm not even sure she knows his name. She just knew that thanks to his genetics he would make a cute baby. After she knew she was pregnant she left him, she never liked him she just wanted me. She just wanted a mixed baby.

The moment I was born she always told me I was so beautiful that the world needed to see it. She made money off of my looks and used me like an animal in a zoo. She only hugged me when I won, she only was nice to me when I won.

There was no love, no sweet talks, she just focused on how I looked and how I could look better.

Arriving to the house I sighed loudly after seeing that my package wasn't there. That means it's in that sweatshop she calls a house. Oh and I meant sweatshop. My room was filled with workout equipment and a small bed. No toys, no colors.

I made my way to the door and knocked. I haven't been here since I was 17. The second I was able to move out I did. The last pageant I did that 1st place prize was 50,000. I worked so hard to win that money, not for her, but for me to move out. I took 20,000, I would've took it all but she would've noticed it quicker.

I got a car and a job the second I moved out. Now I'm in college to be a social worker to protect young girls who are forced into the pageant world or just need a way out. One day I hope to create a whole business to help them.

Moments later she opened the door and I was met with her dead blue eyes. She looked like she was balding from the patches of hair missing from her head. Her hair that used to hold a bleach blonde color is now just gray. She had visible wrinkles under her eyes and she looked tired.