I need fantasy to face reality

And is that really such a bad thing?

Graphic by BFF Ash Duskwood

For as long as I can remember, I’ve immersed myself into different worlds. I started reading fantasy before I can even remember picking up a book. Alongside that I played dress-up and make-believe nearly my entire life — beginning with dance at age three, sprinkling in musical performance in elementary school, adding theatre and modeling in middle school, and topping it with video production in high school. Living within these worlds — on the page, in a snapshot, on a stage — were as natural as breathing and instrumental to how I expressed myself in the world.

There were a number of years where, yes, I was being creative because my role within a job was creative, but I hadn’t been creative for myself since leaving college. I can confidently say I went nearly four years without using that creativity. And it doesn’t surprise me that those four years were some of the hardest of my life.

I was solely focused on growing my professional career in the corporate environment during those four years — the thing I had been told that I want need to do to be successful in life. Despite resonating with the work I was doing, I still felt hollow. In those years — especially while struggling with mental health — life did not feel worth living even though I felt so good using skills I enjoyed with financial and job security.

The pandemic is what forced me to break back into that creativity — rather, creating for myself again. Once everything became work from home, I suddenly had three or more hours back a day because I no longer had to commute, more energy in my tank than I was used to that had been reserved for the drive itself, plus the energy it takes to show up socially in an office environment, and the fact I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything. One day, I picked up a makeup brush as a means to cope through those early days and my art has blossomed monumentally outward since then.

My focus nowadays is directed on fantasy photography and costuming in particular. I landed on these because I discovered the tools and skills to “see” all the worlds that were in my head and bring that immersion I feel into my actual reality.

I want to bring up this quote from the iconic mind of @momo_obrien on Instagram, “I love when people are like, ‘Oh you just use fantasy as a way to escape from reality.’ Yeah dude, get me outta’ here. If not physically, mentally, at the very least.” I, of course, reenacted this sound bite at a renaissance faire with my partner because it resonates with my experience so much. I refound the love of expressing through art and how much my mind needed that place to escape and be myself.

As I’ve heard this critique before about having my head in the clouds I have to posit the questions: Is it such a bad thing that how I fill my heart, my soul, and my wallet whisks me off into a fantasy-land? Why is it a problem to spend days daydreaming, dressing up, and adding in fantastical elements? Because I’m still a person who must live within society who gets brought down to reality with the news, with the taxes I have to pay for my photography business, for the contracts and invoices I have to chase down. Are we so conditioned to live in a society where being miserable is the norm when working? Where having a “real job” means doing something boring?

My time to create is a way to take care of myself, to exist in this world without shaking or retreating in constant anxiety and fear. A place to get out those feelings and cope with everything going on in my life. So when I have to face reality, I come out of a place of fulfillment where I’m better equipped to take it all on.

For now, I’ll continue to live in my fantasy worlds, in a space where I have found and foster community, and where I can feel free to be my favorite version of me.