Proud to be weird.

I was perusing my facebook “people you may know” list the other day and checking out pages of people I used to go to school with decades ago and I got to thinking, as I often do…

Growing up, I was always different. As far back as I can remember I never quite fit into the popular groups. I was in the gifted program in elementary school so I was picked on for that, but I also had my own unique fashion sense, if you can call it that. My parents didn’t do the fancy shmancy clothes thing. What didn’t come from K-Mart came from GoodWill (which explains my overpowering love of GoodWill to this day). Any of my friends that have known me since childhood can tell you that matching was never really my forte. I have always done things my own way even when it came to clothes. The thing is that all through my school years, I didn’t want this to be the case, I wanted desperately to look and act like the “cool” kids. I tried so hard and when I did, it never turned out right. It seemed weird and forced and never quite fit the bill. A couple instances are burned into my memory, the first being around 3rd grade I had a bright orange Reese’s peanut butter cups t-shirt that I loved, and was teased mercilessly for. The other was in high school, I’m pretty sure it was my senior year. I had found a pair of patent leather, tight black pants at the store, Rave, which I adored. I thought for sure these were going to be my ticket to cool. I wore them with a bright yellow tank top and as I was strolling down the hall on my way to class, I passed two of the “cool” girls who were, quite blatantly, laughing at me, not with me. That one broke my heart. Although I realize now they were two of the biggest B-words in the school and I should not have cared one bit. The funniest part was that both of these outfits ended up being cool like 3 years after I was made fun of for them, I was just ahead of my time. The same with the outfits I got myself in Italy that I loved but was made fun of for and when I finally got rid of them because I was tired of being teased, everyone else started wearing them.

This is not a cry for pity. In fact I’m the number one proponent for the anti-anti-bullying campaign. This is how kids are, they are mean. You learn to deal with it, you learn to not care and you learn to love yourself.

Back to present day. As I’m looking at all these “popular” people, I can’t help but laugh. You can tell by looking at them all that their lives never changed after high school, they look the same, they run with the same group, the dress the same, act the same, etc. I graduated over ten years ago, my life has changed exponentially. I have grown as a person, I have learned, I have some of the same friends, the ones that will always be in my life; but I have also grown apart from many of the people from my past and met many new ones.

Here is what has not changed. I still do things my own way. I am still silly, still a little crazy and I still dress in a way that makes the people around me question whether or not they want to be seen with me in public. I will wear blue shoes with a brown outfit and I will rock the S#$% out of it. And now, instead of wanting to be like those people I thought were so cool, I feel sorry for them. I realize now that I was the confident one. They needed to be like everyone else in order to like themselves, and while I had the normal childhood desire to fit in, I couldn’t abandon my individuality even when I tried. I love being me, there is no one else in this world I would ever want to be more than me (except Channing Tatum’s wife but that’s a given), and I will spend all of my parenting energy making sure my kids learn this lesson before they are 31 years old and looking at whatever crazy version of social media they have by then. They will love every little thing about themselves and while they will undoubtedly fall victim to the childhood desire to fit in, I will make sure they are the people everyone else wants to be like and not the ones changing themselves to be like someone else.

Today I do not have to try to fake who I am, I relish who I am. Nothing about me is fake and the best part about that….It takes me 20 minutes to get ready to leave my house at any given time. I don’t need to get up 3 hours early to straighten my hair, put on pounds of make up or make sure my outfit matches my purse. I don’t spend all my money on designer clothes and shoes. I’ve never even been in an Abercromie & Fitch, H&M or any of those cool kid stores. If my stuff has a label on it, it’s a thrift store win. I don’t have to wear designer sunglasses just because “my boyfriend is from Bellevue” and my favorite purse is a converted pillowcase I got at a parade.

The moral of this story, if you have to fake it to make it in the cool kids club, you are not nearly as cool as the blue shoe wearing freak that you are probably making fun of and they probably get more sleep too 🙂