so pretty, very rotten: "i don't need those who do not understand me"

˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

Recently I've been reading a copy of 'So Pretty, Very Rotten' that a friend lent me. This person is the first person I can call a 'real' lolita friend. I've had friends that were interested in the fashion and wore it, friends with a comprehensive love for alternative and Harajuku styles. Perhaps even an interest in old visual kei. But never before someone as 'deep down the rabbit hole' as myself, who I could connect with on things that I'd previously only been able to babble on about on online forums.

And it's brought about a sort of revival, for me. This post was originally hosted on my old LiveJournal page, which briefly came back to life before I decided to move along into a newer space. A small, quiet revival.

What I wanted to talk about right now was: How much of my identity has become inseparable with EGL. It's been a few years that I haven't been wearing it as intensely as I used to, even as recent as back in 2019. Be it a lack of community or (dis)connection, "adulting", and what would become some of the worst years of my mental health.

Just tonight, in the aforementioned book, I read a comic called "Eternal Maidens", as well as an essay on kawaii culture and the shoujo/otome mentality. Within both of them I was struck by incredibly compelling moments that connect to pieces of my inner world in ways that I struggle to put on paper. These are unseen, unspoken shards of my identity. Things that I have tried to change and avoid, to hide— in order to fit into a social mould of what I thought people could be proud of. My most natural self wasn't worthy of admiration so I sought to imitate that which others find admirable, and loved not what I became but what I received for it. And it was never enough.

"I feel like I don't fit in, so I exhibit my weakness. I want to face that weak side and be liberated."

But these reflections see right through me. I am fragile and insecure, I am vain and I am violent. But when I wear lolita I am at my strongest. Not because the clothing is armour. It hides nothing, protects no one. It bares all of this frivolity and fragility, it exposes my dreams like someone yelling my journal entries out into the wind. I wear the softest parts of myself (I wear my innards) on the outside for once, and I am at my strongest because I am not afraid. I am at my most beautiful. I am sincere, come near if you dare.

And when I say these pieces of myself are inexorably liked to the lolita (sub)culture, I perhaps would need to go deeper into the contents of the book for someone unfamiliar. I definitely might, in the future. But the fact that all of the writings collected within and created for this book can peer so clearly into pieces of me that I rarely allow myself free rein to explore— it is a vulnerability that a lot if not most of the people deeply drawn to this community share. It unites us, in a sense (I would like to believe). And I think this sense of unspoken union is one of the reasons I feel such an immediate and ancient (nostalgic) connection to my aforementioned dear new friend. 

˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚