six

the darkness that lives deep in my chest

use her to paint with

to drape with

-

to create something beautiful out of pain

i have been watching a lot of old lady gaga interviews and

listening to THE FAME album.

she’s always been an artist from the very beginning i respected

i loved her weirdness, her putting her darkness into art

and not giving a fuck of what anyone thought

to be unique and different

my high school senior quote was something she said 

“you laugh at me because i’m different, i laugh at you because you’re all the same”

growing up in a more conservative southern city in georgia, i

was often ridiculed  by teenage boys that i was “trying so hard to be different”

because i didn’t like wearing lily pulitzer or jack rogers sandals.

i was on tumblr early as an 11 year old, worshipping lana del rey and odd future.

even though some of their comments bothered me a bit, i still didn’t

want to conform to what any of them thought was cool lol. maybe

that was my teenage pettiness.

i remember one boy i liked in high school told me that i was

at my peak in the 10th grade. HA. i think he never left my hometown.

anyway—

there’s a another quote Gaga said from a Vogue interview in 2021,

“if you believe in yourself, you don’t need other people to tell you you’re great,

to know that you’re an artist on the inside already.”

this one really hits

BELIEVE IN YOU

we’re all artists

i wanna be in my gaga era

i wanna make weird art i wanna show my darkness

imagine if you were to conform

to live your life for others

their approval

their taste level

what they think is good or bad

imagine not being who you really are because

some insecure 17 year old boy told you

your new bangs look dumb and asks why you can’t just wear

normal outfits like the other girls

LOL

that would be a shame!

release what anyone else thinks of you

it actually isn’t your business.

and being free from that

can look like creating some of the

greatest art of your life,

because its real and authentic and it’s you.

and i hope that grown up boy now

is free to live

his life the way he wants

too.