I updated the design of my What the Douglas emails this week and contemplated changing the preheader line, which is something like, "News and updates from the weirdest kid on the block." But I didn't consider it for long, because on a weirdness scale of dry, unbuttered toast to a sculpture of Weird Al made entirely of butter and toast, I'm a solid "high-kneeing it down the street to the tune of Take On Me."
A young Abi G. Douglas ritually sacrificing a pumpkin.
OK, so maybe that weirdness scale is imperfect, because as weird as a breakfast-food depiction of a quirky celebrity is, it's definitely not the weirdest thing out there. The problem with a weirdness scale is that "weird" is subjective and difficult to define. I mean, to the ancient Scots, it used to refer to fate and destiny. How weird is that?
Despite the trouble with defining weirdness, everyone knows what and who is weird.
Except if you're the weird one.
I remember the moment in which I realized people considered me strange. It was toward the end of middle school, and a friend described me as "awkward." She meant it to be endearing, but it also clicked the world into a new perspective for me. Suddenly, it dawned on me that the behavior I considered "normal" for myself was not quite "normal" for everyone else.
Picture this: The "twist revelation" theme from the Saw movies is playing as the camera zooms in on middle school Abi's face, and a montage of memories flashes by. Little Abi pretending to be a red blood cell in the elementary school hallway. Abi leashing an imaginary, floating elephant to her desk during Social Studies, unaware that her method of practicing tying a bowline would be seen as peculiar. Abi carrying a stuffed animal with her to classes, well past the age that toys are appropriate in the classroom, until a teacher has to stop her because it is just so awfully cringe-worthy. Abi drawing comics starring her friends as animals because she has trouble telling human faces apart and understanding her place in the friend group. Abi talking to her imaginary friends at age 13. Abi licking another girl in the shower and being laughed at, oblivious until now that she'd been the butt of a joke, of so many jokes.
The camera pulls back, and Abi murmurs, "Holy sauerkraut, I was weird all along."
It was both a funny and traumatizing experience for me. The scales had fallen from my eyes and I saw for the first time just how weird and embarrassing and "other" I was. I was so ashamed. I wanted to cry, but would that be "awkward"? I wanted to defend myself, because after all this time thinking I belonged, I now had a mountain of evidence proving that I didn't, and it had been right under my nose all this time. How could I not have known?
That was a turning point. My life became piloted by shame and the looming question: "Am I being weird right now?" I questioned everything I said, everything I did, but I still failed to prevent the inevitable outbreaks of strangeness. My impulse to be loud and imaginative and off-the-wall was constantly at war with the new voice in my head that told me I was an embarrassment and a burden and an outsider (and not even the cool, edgy kind of outsider, either).
My entire high school experience was consumed by that war. I felt so separated (thanks largely to my own efforts to separate myself) that I missed out on much of what it was to be a high school student, which served to isolate me even more. It wasn't just that I wasn't comfortable in my skin... All those lessons of "It's what's on the inside that counts" reinforced my fear that who I was, deep beneath the skin, was irreparably wrong. I spiraled in on myself. It was the weirdest kind of narcissism.
I can't remember much of high school. What I can remember is so stained with shame that I rarely care to revisit it. Well, except for when I'm lying awake at night, replaying some bizarre interaction from a decade ago and kicking myself for mistakes that nobody else even remembers.
By college, I was exhausted from the constant battle with myself. So I let the weird run wild, more or less resigned to living the rest of my life as a punchline or a blight. But then college did what it so often does and connected me to other weirdos who didn't remember the many years I spent insisting that I was a cat named Henry or claiming (and truly believing) that there were clumps of "alien DNA" under the skin of my forearm.
Two magical things happened:
- Other people embraced and celebrated my weirdness.
- I embraced and celebrated my weirdness.
I've been living the authentic weird life ever since.
It occurs to me that, with the substitution of certain memories and words, this could double as my coming out story. The realization came to me at about the same time, and I finally embraced THE GAY in my soul right around when I embraced THE WEIRD. I guess the "licking a girl in the shower" memory could work for both stories...
ANYWAY. I'm still self-conscious and prone to shame and toxic introspection, but I'm also proud of my weird ways. Being weird helps me make people laugh, and spurs me to imagine adventures that I can share through my writing, and allows me to see the world in ways that are unique to me.
So, you should feel free to be weird, too. Because everyone falls somewhere on that weird scale. Share the odd thoughts in your head. Wear those funky clothes. Don't be afraid of being awkward or embarrassing. I promise there are people out there who love your brand of bizarre.
I'm one of those people.
Let's get weird.
Start weird, stay weird. Maybe even get weirder.