What does it mean to be weird? What is weird? Who defines it? Why are so many people using this adjective in such a derogatory way?
It took me a while to understand that I was not like most girls. I could never quite pinpoint just exactly what separated myself from them. I wanted to play with my American Girl dolls, I wanted to be on the soccer team, I wanted to ride my bike all day and enjoy the sunshine. Why was I being deemed as different? Was I ugly? I don’t think so. Was I not fun to play with? I think so. Did I miss the secret meeting telling everyone to look at me differently? I must have.
I had friends, I would like to say a lot of them, but it took me a while to realize that all of these people I surrounded myself were not like me. We had different personalities, regardless of the common interests that kids often find in each other.
Growing up was a struggle to find a place that I belonged. I had put up with the same friends for a number of years and found that most of them always thought I was a little on the strange side. My ideas, goals and forms of socialization were just a tad different from theirs, and, so be it, I was deemed the “weird friend” out of the group.
Finding people who truly understood me was a challenge I faced in middle school, high school and even to this day in college. People are so quick to use the term weird. They will throw it at anybody who chooses to not be like everybody else. Why is it so easy to judge?
People are different. If we all acted the same, looked the same, and did the same things, the world would be ridiculously boring. People don’t realize how easy it is to conform; to do and say the same things everyone else is doing and saying. But we so quickly forget the lessons that books like Orwell’s 1984 and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 teach us; that being an individual is undeniably necessary in order to live a fulfilling life.
When someone slips through the cracks of normality, they have support, but often they also have to deal with a lot of opposition, ready to call them a weirdo. What is so wrong with being yourself?
People should embrace who they are, whether they are “weird” or not. In my eyes, being your own person is what this life is about. The people who are made fun of, called names, presumed weird; those are the people who have got themselves figured out. Those are the people who are ready to take life on, embracing who they are.
The “weird” kids you went to high school, middle school and elementary school with, aren’t as strange as you led them on to be. They were just being their own person, and there is no harm in that.
