tzar zsa zsa [capitol]

[Azalea]

28

Fame fades fast. I guess it's deserved.

Sometimes I feel like my creativity died a long time ago and all that is left is self-reference and self-pity. I could be amazing, completely amazing, but I stop myself because it feels like I don't fit in anywhere, so I become this character-version of myself that is essentially what (I think) people expect from me. I make people laugh with the same jokes they have heard a thousand times before, I play upon the same corny themes and tell the same stupid stories. There's this facade and preconception that everyone seems to have of me that is so five years ago, it's like I'm wrapped in this time-warping plastic wrapper that is impossible to break out of. There's caution tape across my body and people don't think I have a heart just because I don't take shit. Forgive me for asking the questions that you're too afraid to ask. Forgive me for trying to grow out of the box you placed me in.

A lot can change in a few years. Don't get me wrong, there's still an untamed beast inside me. I feed the beast with the people I've lost along the way: the egos that became so inflated that they exploded, guts becoming my glory because it smells too sweet to let rot. But life goes on, right? Things happen to people and people change. Desires and attitudes and addictions instill a fluidity within a person that means they are always moving, adapting to the chunks that get knocked off of them and mutating new parts which better suit their new environment. I wish people could see that — that I'm not sixteen and desperate for attention anymore, that I'm not thinking of the next best way to shoot someone down for the sake of raising me up. I give more space to other people now. I listen and care. I hold a hand that isn't my own. The past selves I nurtured have been lost to time and my present self wants to just live in the most abhorrently loud and beautiful way possible.

That originality is so important to me, but sometimes I do feel like my brain is just sort of, shriveling up. The color is kind of seeping out and it fades to a sickly grey. Dehydrated from the alcohol, I poke it with a stick and hope that it does something, literally anything, but nope — there's nothing. Not a twitch, not a flinch. It doesn't kick like it used to. It doesn't have the same bite that required me to muzzle it at times and censor what got through the gate. The stillness is unrivaled by even the saddest of ghosts. It's frozen. I wonder whether it's because I'm just completely empty, and that all the poetry that once span around my head like a solar system of stars has somehow fallen to the ground, or whether it's because I'm suffering from yet another fractional death that sees the personality I've adopted for the week crumble into the sea of my real self. I wash it away with another drink and savor the flavor until the process starts again. Rinse and repeat.

Maybe I'm just past it. Is that what happens when you grow up? Is growing up just growing out of the things that you loved when you were younger? I wish I had the answer. It might make it easier to hold on without white knuckles. 

The thing is: I want to restore myself to my former glory. I want the color injected back into my veins and the pretty words to flow from my mouth, I want to build worlds again and play pretend that I have the power to change the real one... but look at me, goddammit, I'm so out of practice that my idea of a rainbow is an oil spill. World building for me is giving personalities and histories to the homeless people who ask me for money that I don't have. As for changing the real world, I mean, yeah, good luck to whoever thinks they can do that. I think I'm at least over being delusional to such a grandeur point. I'd hate to think that my prime happened without me even knowing it was happening — how sad would that be? I would've wasted the best years of my life worrying about everything there is to worry about, and everything there isn't to worry about. Re-peaking feels like this strange, abstract idea that involves some kind of ethereal miracle because it's so difficult to get up when you have been knocked down nine times before. Bloodied knees and a scuffed chin, nobody wants to see that. Nobody gives a platform to someone like that. 

I don't blame them.

I'm just a mess that wants to be less messy, and I think I am in so many ways. They'll never see that, though. You'll never see that. 

The world is so unforgiving. It remembers every mistake and magnifies it to the millionth degree. There's never anywhere to hide and nobody gives you the chance to show you've changed. I take accountability for all the times I upset people and did things out of spite. I have apologized more times than I made mistakes but nobody pays attention to that. Nobody cares about that, that isn't news, that isn't exciting. The planet keeps turning and the cliques keep biting the hand that feeds them. Mercy is false and so is soul. I've learnt that the hard way. Soul means nothing when you can have a crown. 

And since I'll never get one, I'll just make my own. Dull and uninspired, falling into the same tropes as five years ago. Queen of nothing, King of everything. I could show everyone that I have kick-started my heart, but it's so much easier to drop-kick everyone else's when they so actively root against you, so much so that the silence when you walk into a room feels like a bullet to the brain.

I'll lick my wounds when nobody is looking. I'll unpick the stitches in the spotlight.

Time to put the wig on and go again.