I don’t know. I’ve pretty much decided to give my life to the world as a vessel for the greater good – whatever that may be, it’s 6am and I’m feeling dramatic – and become a harbinger for positive revolution and sundry via studying politics and international affairs, but I really really love fashion and design. Always have, always will. My love for pink is infamous but I’ve also been told by relative strangers how great my taste in fashion is and how I seem to have an artistic eye for these things.
Look.
I don’t really care about being modest right now. If I’ve given up the desire to be a fashion designer/stylist, I’m allowed to at least gush about my own brilliance with aesthetics. And it wasn’t really an easy choice to make – going into the field I’ve decided to go into was inevitable but it didn’t come without heartache. I spent my whole life convincing myself I was going to go into some or the other creative field, only to wake up one day and realize what I actually want to commit to is something much bigger than myself. And yet, even when you decide on one thing, your other passions surface and resurface, breaking through your decisiveness and making you sigh wistfully. My dad always wanted me to go into design but he’s pretty biased himself, seeing as how I got a lot of my creative impulses from him (I mean, for a guy who has degrees in computer science and business, he sure does love his couture).
But I guess that’s why when I find an outlet for my creativity, I latch onto it like a very pink, very feminine leech and sap it of its uses until I get bored. Dress up games, make up, sewing, Polyvore, fashion illustration, whatever. My urges towards fashion are violent – as any good passion ought to be – and they demand some kind of platform to serve as catharsis.
People always raise their eyebrows in surprise when I say no, I’m not going into fashion design, I’m actually going to study the stuff of dinner table debates. And although it makes a small, traitorous part of me long for what could have been, I also take a strange pleasure in it; the bows, the frills, the lace and the pink just add to the unassuming persona I want to cultivate.
And with that unsettling thought, I must sleep.
Neiha Lasharie 