I will never know the way it feels to be just anyone

Welcome to the Ball – Rufus Wainwright

            Sometimes she is a man - she slips into his skin.  In many ways it fits better than her own.  She has, after all, worn it for years and it never really changes, where as she has changed in so many ways.  She knows it probably has changed really, but only in appearance, and so gradually it is almost indistinct. 

He is ever youthful – an amalgam of characters from television series and films she has immersed herself in.  Attempted to loose herself in.   Chameleonic and evolving as naturally as breathing as she's gown older and her escapism obsessions have migrated, meandered, matured.  He is confident, attractive and best of all Free.  A leader.  Always a leader.  Someone who commands and receives attention.

She seems to remember it beginning when she was small with ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' and ‘Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers'.  She would be Leonardo, or Jason the Red Ranger, she can no longer remember which was first.  She took him on at night when the shouting was loudest – she would become him, and have adventures and would no longer be in that pink bedroom squinting at the crack of light that peered between the white gloss frame and the white gloss door.  Squinting until the light became a bright enveloping shaft reaching out to her.  Bathing her.  In that light she first became him.

When she eventually fell into slumber she wouldn't notice and the play would continue until she woke in the morning.  She lived for those night time adventures.  Sometimes they spilled into the day when playing with neighbours.  She was always good at orchestrating adventures and they would follow and join in, taking ‘her' lead.  But time does not stand still and play is supposed to be left behind.  Neighbours wanted to talk boys or clothes or music -

            ‘Peaches come in cans they were put there by a man!'

- and no longer held truck with a girl who played a boy.  So privately she tried on Peter Pan and Pinocchio – kidnappings and imprisonments.  No one rescued him.  He grew darker and brooding. 

Her teenage years adopted Chakotay from ‘Star Trek: Voyager', then Angel from ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer'.  She dimly recalls flings and experiments with others, but she remembers those adolescent years better.  Between Chakotay and Angel they began to explore the sexual, evolving as she matured and filtering into her dreams.  She always enjoyed the dreams that continued her stories the best.  By now, the stories were complex involving whole worlds and had been going for years.  She lived an entirely different life at night – a life where she was somebody.

For a while she tried on Squall from ‘Final Fantasy VIII' – it was her first real foray into gaming – the Role Play Game (RPG) was like an interactive film.  But it soon was not enough.  Plot lines in TV and films were becoming predictable.  Unsatisfying.  She started to write.  Seemingly overnight she understood how to write ‘creative' poetry.  How to get good marks in English Literature at school.  She wrote obsessively.  Plays, poetry, novels, lyrics.  A new way to escape.  A new way to play.  An accepted way to play.  The first poem was published.  Something had started.

Whilst at university, she played with Colin Firth's Mr Darcy, and Crichton from ‘Farscape', but it was Legolas from Peter Jackson's ‘The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, that became the latest more consistently sampled.  The character at night is now almost 9 years removed from the adoption; he is no longer truly recognisable.  He is an amalgam of all of the previous incarnations.  Dark hair, dark eyes - so deep they are almost black, lean and muscular. 

In truth the character underneath is always the same – her chimera personality perhaps, but the base determines the dreamscape – the background, the setting, the other characters.  It provides another doorway into that world of escapism – beyond immersing herself in the episodes, films, and reading the books.  Others' words.  Others' worlds.

            She experimented once with a splitting of herself.  She tried having a twin – likely born through playing another RPG; ‘Vampire: Bloodlines' – a darker, sexier twin.  In homage to LOTR she used her names in an ‘Elvish' name generator and adopted Artanis and Aranel.  Silmarwen Celebrindal (her real self) became side lined.  Artanis was light, honest, childish and innocent – utterly human.  Aranel darkly adult, fun, cruel and dangerously attractive – flickering between Malkavian and Ventrue.  She began to experiment with the girls during the day trying them on like masks.  One day she would be Artanis, another Aranel.  She'd tried this whilst at secondary school but had never named them and it had never been so utterly polar before.  Hating herself; every new term she had tried to re-invent herself.  She no longer remembers really why.  It seemed necessary.  Perhaps she was searching for herself.  Perhaps she was lonely and wanted friends.  The flaw in the theory is that people do not see a different person.  Once they ‘know' you – you are a closed case.  Attempting to change this further alienates so it had never lasted and she had always become the base ‘her' again.  This time, at university, she became Artanis or Aranel depending on her mood.  She used it to her advantage or detriment.  Aranel played with boys (and girls) and some got attached and Artanis was ill-equipped to deal with the fallout.  Aranel loved the attention while it lasted and   Artanis, easily hurt and prone to moping - incapable of dealing with confrontation.  Aranel would never mope.  Aranel did not hide.

Artanis and ‘Legolas' began a night relationship which compensated for her real relationships crumbling through distance, loneliness and resulting self-sabotage.  She became quiet and wrapped herself in Artanis and Aranel.  Detaching from real people she began to invest in, and long for, the night relationship.  She would flicker between Artanis and ‘Legolas' and as such the story took new direction and added complexity.  But something was lacking. 

In 2005, desperate to feel attractive, yet utterly lonely, and deep and drowning in the sway of the latest all-encompassing darkness, she trawled the newly launched MySpace for her long term on-again-off-again (then off) ex.  There were two candidates.  She had friended both.  This seemingly unremarkable event led to her entire world changing.  He would be the first person to hear her, see her, and listen.

For a while after they moved in together in 2007, the night adventures became less frequent and almost stopped altogether.  Until something happened just after they married in 2012 that made her return to them with force.  Legolas and Artanis, both waiting in the wings and glimpsed on nights when sleep evaded her, suddenly flickered solidly into Blaine from Glee.  Resonating.  Pulsating.  Alive.

 Times New Roman