22/06/2022
Live a lie long enough, it becomes your reality.
I was everything they wanted me to be - bright and expressive, from a decent family, with decent grades, and a decent amount of friends. I was well-liked and accepted – as someone else.
Music was my window into the real me. When I sang Mariah Carey at the top of my lungs until my voice echoed through the school halls, I wanted to shatter the perfect illusion of who I pretended to be. If you could gift me your acceptance, then accept the real me instead.
Barnaby was a dream. A kind, generous, exhilarating dream that showed me the easy tranquillity of unbridled acceptance, and the dizzying fullness of being loved for me. Our life together was a hidden dream - our little oasis, where I was me and he was everything I never knew possible.
But he wasn’t a dream – and his passing was the cruellest awakening. What we shared was real, but I had nothing to show for it, just bitterness and regret to be hidden from the world again. What we had and what we could’ve had, was beautiful - and beautiful things need to be shared.
So I shared. I shared our love, and you, and me - in our entireties, in our truths, and in my music, the windows flung wide open for everyone to see because I could not live in a world where our love was kept hidden anymore. I sang so the world could know us; so that the world could know me too.
Living my truth has not been easy. I am simultaneously too much and never enough, caught in the in-betweens of what people are willing to accept. But when I’m bold, and expressive, and liked today, I’m liked for me.
The real me –
Unapologetic, uncompromising, and unwavering me.
The truth will set you free.
Zelos Wong
Singer/Songwriter
