follow your weird.
with oasis playing live in chicago the night of publishing this, i think it’s only right i kick things off with a quote from their hit song “supersonic”:
“i need to be myself, i can’t be no one else”
yeah, so, a lot of my friends think i’m weird as fuck. and that’s okay.
i’m sure like many other kids out there, you have probably heard that famous dr. seuss quote where he says:
“those that mind don’t matter, and those that matter don’t mind”.
it’s an oft-used cliché to let you know that you should just be you, and people who have a problem with that? well, they can go fuck themselves.
in a world obsessed with experience, i can promise you one thing: i have plenty of experience with being weird as all hell. a lifetime of experience, you might say. i’ve put in my 10,000 hours - i’ve mastered the art of being a little strange. and for that reason, i feel confident in my qualifications when it comes to the subject.
to be clear, we’re all weird. the only things that differ are what we’re weird about and how society at large views our weirdness.
to me, weirdness is good - it’s at the heart of the individual. in a world that’s always trying to get us to conform, to follow, and to go with the crowd, individualism is often reserved for looking out for your interests financially or professionally, but not socially.
we’re encouraged to mute our weirdness if it conflicts with the popular noise. you might be weird in that you’re a diehard sports fan. that’s great for you! that’s a societally accepted weirdness. same with being a binge-watcher of tv, someone who loves to travel, or someone who is maybe a bit too obsessed with dogs. these are idiosyncrasies that are common - a lot of people share them, and while they may be one person’s “weird”, they’re generally acceptable to a wider group.
even more niche forms of weirdness are becoming popularized. back in the day, if you were a star wars fan or a dungeons and dragons player, you might have been looked at as a weirdo nerd. nowadays, these nerdy properties are becoming mainstream - star wars is already there. you’re arguably weirder if you don’t like star wars (well, at least the OG movies. the tide has turned lately. thanks disney.)
the world of weird has no limit. if you can label it, you can call it weird. it might be the way you dress, the way you hold your phone, the way you sign off your emails, or even the way you eat your cereal. milk first? what are you a sicko?
with all this being said, why am i even addressing the topic anymore? weirdness is ubiquitous, right? so what’s the story here?
the story is that there are people out there who are weird in ways that don’t quite fit in with society. they’re not star wars nerds, they’re not DND players, and they certainly haven’t traveled to tulum or bali. when you hear the word “weird”, you might think of someone who you never quite understood.
think of the shy kid in school who wore the same hoodie every day. the quirky girl who drew pictures all over her own skin. your former co-worker who always heated up seafood in the break room microwave. okay, that guy was just an asshole. but chances are, you know some people who you always thought were just…so strange. and if you didn’t? well, you might have been them.
like i said before, a lot of my friends think i’m weird as fuck. and that’s okay. but for the longest time, it wasn’t. it was my curse - i fought against the weirdo allegations for so long that i almost lost my entire identity in the process. it’s time to take a trip down memory lane.
as a kid, i didn’t really care if people thought i was weird. that’s typical kid stuff. i was proud of my various interests - from airplanes to dinosaurs, whales to weather, from baseball to maps, and history to architecture. i loved to know things as a kid, and i loved to let people know that i knew things. i probably came across as a massive show-off, but self-awareness isn’t exactly a kid’s greatest strength. from my POV, i wasn’t showboating - i genuinely thought everyone was as excited about my interests as i was. i was bullied a little bit for being a know-it-all, but i honestly didn’t mind. the kid version of me had a super thick skin - i was very secure. i loved who i was, and i didn’t really care if others did or not.
that all changed during the dreaded time we know as middle school. as soon as kids turn 12, they start to realize that their decisions matter - and their popularity matters. i learned this all too well when i saw former friends of mine pretend they didn’t even know me and even start bullying me in some cases. middle school was trial by fire, and i never got the memo about stop drop and roll. my weirdness was no longer something i was proud of - i was witnessing firsthand how it was turning people off.
in life, there comes a moment where you must decide - do you want to follow the crowd, or do you want to forge your own path? for me, the choice was easy. i didn’t want to be one of the weird kids. for as much as i was being ridiculed, there were kids who had it way worse than me. i still had a few friends, and some people seemed to think i was “normal”. so i figured i would try and be as normal as i could. and thus began the years-long battle against my own weirdness.
i blocked out many of my interests because i didn’t think they were cool. i made sure my ipod only had rap songs on it even though i liked other genres just as much. i pretended not to care about art class or history class. i made my parents accompany me to stores that wreaked of cologne like hollister or abercrombie because i wanted to dress like the cool kids. it was all very insincere, but i thought that’s what you had to do to be cool.
it worked well enough - i wasn’t popular, but i wasn’t really weird either. I was just kinda there. and that’s how life went for me through high school too. i was so terrified to take one step out of line that i censored myself endlessly to make sure i wouldn’t do something “weird”. it was a battle i was never going to win, because my weirdness could not be contained. it was rebelling within me, begging for me to let it out. and when life got frustrating, my weirdness came out. i was prone to bouts of anger or frustration because i was suppressing my very nature - i was living a lie. i was losing my identity. and my soul was calling out for help.
“let me out! (let me out, just let me out, just let me out” - flipturn, “inner wave” and also my weird side in middle school and high school
the lie continued through college, where i continued to mold my personality into whatever would get me liked. the problem was, anyone who liked me only kind of did. i was forgettable because i was nobody. i was so terrified of being labeled weird that I never even developed a personality. either that, or i tried on a bunch of new ones, hoping one would be a hit and stick. all in all, it was helpless.
because of my obsession with self, i failed to see the weird all around me. high school and college are the times when most kids start to figure out who they are and embrace it. some figure it out quickly and develop high levels of self-confidence because of it. some take more time. i took the longest amount of time, because i never figured it out. i was so stuck in my own head trying to be anything but weird that i never learned who i was. i did whatever i thought would make me be liked. and not even liked - but tolerated. anything but disliked. anything but hated. the insecurity literally ruined me. no one can live like that forever.
the irony of all this is that in all my efforts not to be hated, i succeeded. except for in one case. there was only one person who hated me. and of course, that person was me. i resented myself for stifling my own personality, i longed to just get out, to escape my body, my mind, my life, and to somehow find a new one. acting as if the past was a prison that confined my future, all i wanted was to start over, but I didn’t think i could. i believed myself to be too far gone, too committed to the bad bit of being a background actor, an extra in the movie about my own fucking life.
longing to be someone else because being me was painful as fuck, i started to think of what i needed to do to feel normal. not be normal - that was a deathtrap. how could i feel whole, authentic, fulfilled in this life that had all been a lie? i didn’t know what it was like to just exist, to just live. i was always putting on an act, putting up a front. it was exhausting. and it absolutely destroyed my mental health.
thankfully, as all phases of youth eventually do, this period of my life ended.
it wasn’t until after college that i finally started to figure out who i was. at the end of 2019 - the year i turned 24 - i made the decision that i had had enough of this miserable feeling. i needed to find a way out, and the only way out was to start looking for an identity. i started to be honest with myself about what i liked, disliked, and felt. i wore clothes i wanted to wear, i tried hobbies that i had always wanted to try, i laughed at jokes i thought were actually funny. i listened to music i wanted to listen to, not what everyone else thought was cool. it was fun to discover what authenticity felt like!
bit by bit, i started to form an honest to god identity. and the most refreshing and encouraging part was that dr. seuss was right: the ones who mattered didn’t mind. in fact, they were proud of me, and they let me know it. my true friends and family probably always saw through my performance anyway. i bet they always knew i was holding back who i was to try and please the world. and once i stopped, they stood by me.
even if some of my new traits were kinda weird.
not everybody enjoyed my newfound weirdness, however. i have some other friends who have seemed to back away the more they’ve gotten to know the new me. they’ve distanced themselves from me for the most part and have made comments about me when i am around that make me think that they are not fans of who i now am. and that’s okay. because like i said before - those who mind, don’t matter.
being a person is really fucking difficult. we’re social creatures - we are hardwired to want to be liked. on some level, we need social approval to feel good about ourselves, and sometimes the easiest way to find that social approval is to follow the crowd. but as i know better than just about anyone - following the crowd can lead you down the path to insanity. inner turmoil. a loss of identity.
following the crowd is good - so long as the crowd really does represent you. there’s nothing wrong with being a big sports fan if that’s who you really are, or loving star wars if that’s really true about you. those are great ways to form community around shared weirdness! the problem comes when you fear your weirdness so much that you are willing to completely hide it away so that you will be accepted. at the end of the day, our most important relationship is the one we have with ourselves. we spend every moment of every day with ourselves, and we can’t lose our most important relationship in an attempt to preserve the other ones we have.
following the crowd can be dangerous. instead, follow your weird. it might just lead you to happiness.
the best part is that weirdness of all kinds are welcome here on The Moon.
