“Desirae:

There once was a Princess,

Who dressed as a pauper;

Who thought she would die,

If she lived any softer.

Even in her tower,

Of Ivory white;

She was depressed,

And cried every night.

If she would start,

Her Path Anew;

She’d have to learn how,

“To thine own self be true.”

Don’t lose your way, Desirae.”

One of the poems that I wrote while either figuring out my name, working through emotions as I got the name, or the piece I did for my performance that I will be posting within the next week. It’s a fairy tale like aesthetic, for sure. The content, however, about various different themes relating to get my name back. I also refer to this in many of the life update comics, and use lines from this poem even in that performance piece.

In this poem I talk about how engaging with being open with who I was (and that not fitting masculine norms) seemed to increase certain outside threats, or perceived ones. It’s also briefly mentions that this place was a strange one for me to be in, because of my privileged experience. Being white, growing up in Suburbia, even some of the social/ familial support I have now. In the same breath that recognizing that I had grown up lucky, or have supportive parents (which many queer folk don’t), and other resources, it was still a struggle growing up hiding who I was. It was like the very tower that protected me felt like a cell I was caged in, and it was and is hard to wrap my head around.

The pauper thing played into that too. Not just as a kid, but in all ages I felt this weird tug-of-war. This contradiction. Dressing up fashionable seemed to signify possible queerness, in ways, but not being up to snuff also could be socially ostracizing. So, the line about dressing as a pauper, is almost literal. I didn’t know I had ADD as a kid though I exhibited a lot of extremes of various symptoms even up to this very day. So, because I couldn’t channel masculinity in athleticism or other means, I kinda used the closet as an excuse to be a mess before I knew what the closet was. Being a mess/slob had more of a “guy” connotation. So as frustrating and self defeating as the symptoms were, I felt safer in that space. I could be a mess and not get beaten up for being a “@#$,” cool. Yeah. But I was still weird, stained, ripped, unfashionable little monster. Who often got by pure chance in school because I was never organized in terms of studying, either. Yeah. That had no negative repercussions. Not a one! But the idea of being the princess dressed as pauper facilitates that whole “if I went out doing what I really wanted to do, I would be more exposed and less safe than I was.” How much of it was paranoia? How much did I play into the bullshit I was so upset over while trying to survive and stay safe? Who knows. It was Juvenile and tacky. More ways than one.

So if I wanted to grow past all that? I had to start accepting myself, and grow on that path. That ties into the ending parts, and the last line, a lot. Also, the “don’t lose your way” line is from an Anime where the girl is an action hero, and it stuck with me in terms of theming. For all the times I was told to “be the best you can be” (lol) and that I should “be myself” or that I had a God given talent, or I was loved and appreciated unconditionally, that I should stay on the “straight and narrow…” there was nothing more confusing and isolating than being in the closet. The ways told me to move forward were often exactly how I got lost to begin with. And if I was to really bloom, come into my own, I had to accept this side of me. All themes in my performance piece.

Okay, so that was long. But that’s it for now! Hopefully if I have other stuff written, poetry or prose, I will try to post some of it! This has some elements of “15 year old just starting to write” but I am proud of it, cause it was one of the first poems I had written in years. 

So hope you enjoyed, and see you around!