You’re weird

A previous girlfriend of mine once said to me, “what you’re doing is weird.”

She was talking about my absence from social media, no Facebook, no Instagram etc.

I’d tapped out of them all. I realised the facade I was putting on. All the things I’d share were a fraction of what was actually going on in my head. I had some sort of reputation to uphold yet it didn’t match the story I was telling myself.

So my cure was removal. Cut cut cut. Removing the noise. Getting quiet. Going to where it’s least crowded. I got offline from social media and went online in my own head.

I started writing every day. Every day spilling out my thoughts onto the page. Then I figured it out. I wasn’t loving myself enough. I was loving the feeling I got from others when they loved me. When I realised I could generate that feeling from myself, it became a superpower. Now I could use it to create, to make, to learn, to love, to follow my interests, to be as weird as I wanted, to go left instead of right.

I told myself every day. I love you. I love you. I love you.

“You’re weird” is the best compliment I can ever receive.

Being weird means you’re trying something different. Whatever it is, it may not be right and it may take you a while to figure it out. But at least you’re trying.

Water can easily flow through a path its been before. That’s boring. What’s more interesting is when some of the stream decides to branch off and create a new path. Something that wasn’t there before.

And I’m sure the same thing would happen if the stream could talk to itself. As soon as part of it tried something different, it’d say “you’re weird”.

When what it really means is, “what you’re doing is different and I don’t fully understand it yet, so I’m going to call it weird”.

The 10-year old you looks up to the older weirder you. The one who does things differently to others. The one who does their own thing.