Lolita fashion costume from loveburlesque.com

I feel horrible. I’ve been neglecting my writing, but life has a way of getting in the way, but that’s no excuse. I’ll do better in the future, but I’ll have to figure out some sort of posting schedule to keep me on task.

I’m sitting here, in my bedroom, feeling as though I’m missing a part of me. You ever felt that way? I do most of the time.  I live in a world where I can never truly be myself. I have to act as though I’m (somewhat) manly, although I would rather be wearing a cute dress or skirt. I would rather be wearing heels than sneakers. I want to dress like a princess, but I’m cursed, left to wander the barren wasteland, sentenced to wear these garments of shame.

Pants, yuck!

I know, I’m being facetious, but at the same time, I’m telling the truth. I feel as though I’m a pretender, living a convenient lie about myself, that I am who I pretend to be. I’m not. Not really. Not that I’m not the man people see everyday, but there’s more to me, more than I allow anyone to see. I’m some freak of nature, neither man or woman, but both at the same time. Does that make any sense?

This is the image I want for myself. Sad isn’t it? Back when I was in my twenties, I may have been able to pull it off, but now that I’m nearing forty? Forget it. Still, I think it’s interesting to think about who we are, how we see ourselves versus how others see us, and how we want to be. I want to appear manly, but sometimes I wish I could give up the pretense and just be the silly little girl my heart yearns to be.

I envy those who could. I envy those girls who gave up pretending, who stopped living imprisoned within their genetic makeup, and did  something to realize their true image of themselves. Sex and gender are too complicated to define via genitalia, The penis does not a man make, nor the vagina a woman. It’s painful when the largest sex organ, the brain, is at odds with the body.

So I hide behind the beard, shielding myself from the fact that I will never be pretty, nor beautiful. I will never be anyone’s princess. I will forever be the beast, angry and alone, praying for Death to take me, but who seems to be enjoying my torment.

Maybe someday things will change, but not now. I will put on my mask, trudge down the path that fate has dealt me. I wish I were strong enough to become who I want to be, but I’m not. And so I suffer, no one around me knowing, or caring, why I’m always in such a bad mood. Try living a lie. It isn’t easy to maintain a fiction and remain happy.

And thus bitterness is born…