I have never wrote an ode to myself, it was almost awkward to create. Admittedly, this was an attitude some people have given me in the past. Don’t get me wrong, I love my fans to this day, but there are some people you meet who think you have to be a 100% right all the time in order to be their friend, one mark of darkness and you are a bad, bad person with no aim of redemption. Which is tragic.

I am someone for forgiveness, I think we should always forgive people even if they’ve hurt us very badly, so we, ourselves can heal; by forgive, I do not mean befriend them, I simply mean, acknowledge they did something bad and aim to work out what is best for the situation.

The bitter and sugar refers to how I’ve encountered some horrible people and how I always try my hardest even with the worse of people, to find the best in them, sometimes you can get somewhere and the path to emotional healing can begin for them, other cases, you can get some stubborn individuals who refuse to acknowlege they are in any kind of wrong at all. So I suppose, this poem is majorly about ego and how sometimes it can be destructive to cut yourself short or praise yourself too highly, too things I have majorly suffered with throughout my life.

I did alter the last line when re-reading it, from mentioning my name again to “Your life is more important than mine”, solely because I feel sometimes when people share a reputation of any kind and a nice following, they sometimes belittle themselves over the success of the other.

I am always saddened when people compare themselves to those of higher popularity, but I think it’s very common for those with insecurities to do so, I just hope one day they can love themselves just as much as they love these people they look up to.

One thing I won’t deny about my younger years, I was a bit of a player when I finally got the ball rolling. I wasn’t ‘extremely attractive’, but I was charismatic, which lead people into my life quite easier. People loved me, it was weird, but it wasn’t due to fame, it was due to not really knowing how to convey love itself.

Let’s be real, how many of us as kids went: ‘I want a girlfriend who I will love!’? To then realise, wait, no you don’t, you didn’t think of the ‘long-run’ you thought of the ‘now’ and how much fun you could get out of that thrill of being with someone.

Despite the ‘thrill’ a lot of times when people began to get a lot more ‘personal’ I would not pursue, I would often back down or not let it escalate that far. I was terrified of being in that situation and sometimes, still am to this day.

When you can play hearts, people come to think of you as the ‘bad boy’, sort of stereotype; People see you as a heartbreaker and in a way, they wouldn’t be wrong. I’ve definitely broke plenty of hearts in the past, but I think there were times it reversed back on me and backfired badly. A lot of the time being a ‘player’ consists of who can leave who first hanging more than ‘let’s genuinely make this work’.

There are times being a player you would even advance onto Strangers romantically rather easily.

The black hair dye is to reference how entering my earlier teens I was very much into the 2000s ‘emo’ trend of dying your hair black, saying you are ‘edgy’ and all this and that and sometimes it’s just funny to look back on. I definitely was an emotional kid and I just often didn’t know how to express it and I think I saw the emo subculture as a way to express my inner feelings.

So many guys bought me gifts, it was actually insane. I mostly would receive games if anything, but you’d be shocked how much someone would do for you if you have them wrapped around your finger. Admittedly, today, I probably wouldn’t do that, I just think it was a bit cruel how I used to almost play these people’s feelings and they would give me everything they had and it just wasn’t ‘enough’ because they never had a chance to begin with. They were definitely deep in the friendzone.

Now I’m more independent when it comes to relationships with people, I try my best to give as much to them as they give me or more, solely because I don’t want someone to feel like I am using them just for money, because in the end money isn’t love, it never is and never was.

The beautiful part about the ending is when you show affection and interest in someone who doesn’t reflect those interests, it captures a player’s attention like ‘I could easily get everyone else, why is this different?’ and it links into Shades of Blue a bit, which will be later on in the book.

This poem’s form follows the structure of a Rondeau which is a rather short poem, but it definitely was fun to write, it was interesting to see what I could do with the limitation of words but I think also including those words into things that reflect on my past was the biggest challenge.