A good deal of life is walking around wondering, “Is this normal?”

I like to lay in bed stark naked and pretend to make snow angels while my dog softly paws at the bedroom door because she can sense some interesting human behaviors are afoot and wants to stare at me with that cocked head look dogs do when humans are humaning. Is that normal?

I like the feeling of cotton balls in my mouth as I quietly nosh on their dry, but soft spongy material as I sit in traffic. Is that normal?

I find myself fighting the desire to break into 1960s tv show theme songs when trying on clothes I’ll never buy at the Gap because it’s the Gap and I like for my clothes to have some semblance of a personality. Is that normal?

I want to kiss that lady’s baby on the mouth, potentially with tongue. Is that normal? I’m going to stop you right there. No. It certainly is not and frankly, I need to call the police because you should definitely be in jail. 

Please get off of my blog, you sick perv. The rest of you are cool and can stay.

Now, where were we? Ah yes.

We often suppress our weird ticks out of fear of being socially rejected for not falling into the confines of normalcy, but what even is normal?

Someone’s parent once asked, “if everyone was jumping off of a bridge, would you?” I think the bigger question here is, if everyone is jumping off of a bridge, is that normal? It would seem the odd man out who isn’t jumping off of a bridge is the normal and smarter one in this ridiculous hypothetical situation.

I didn’t realize I was perceived as “weird” by some until in kindergarten. Yes, you read that correctly. My parents really let me walk around for five whole years being weird as shit and didn’t even have the nerve to pull me aside and be like “Hey, listen. You’re kind of creeping people out. Can you at least try to do what all the other kids are doing? Go grab an adult’s leg and hang on while they try to walk and you cackle incessantly or pick your nose while telling a long, drawn out story that has zero conclusion and of which you’ll lose focus at least four times while relaying.” 

I really question their love for me.  

“You’re so weird!” William shouted

at me across one of those mini tables they make for children so they aren’t painfully aware of how tiny and practically forgettable they are as humans. I had just rejected the M&Ms the teacher was offering me in favor of raisins. To revert back to that elementary level and interject some playground philosophy into this little flashback, who died and made you the normal police, William!?

With that blunt remark, the veil had been lifted from my eyes and I was suddenly very cognizant of my differences or rather, my unique brand of weird– over raisins, nonetheless! Nature’s candy and a fine ingredient in a cookie. Fight me. 

All it takes is being told “you’re weird” to suddenly make someone painfully aware of their quirks and want to stifle the very qualities that make them an individual.

Now, there’s always a little nag in the back of our minds trying to assess if we’re being too weird or if people are “getting” us. It’s all so incredibly tiring and yet, this is the pressure we put on ourselves in order to be socially well received. The constant back and forth of assessing if someone is a fellow partner in weird or a nark puts us in a state of unnecessary anxiousness.

We’re all walking around feeling like freaks because we never really know what other people are thinking or how they perceive us. Even worse, we harp on these perceived social failures vowing to never be that weird again when instead, we could work to better curate our social circles and seek out other like minded weirdos that make us feel “normal”– whatever that may be.

I read a quote that said, “we judge others based on their actions but want to be judged based on our intentions.” Taking that into account, perspectives change. There’s only so much one can do to be received with the correct intent and even then, there can still be confusion on how to go about relaying our true intentions in order to get the desired response. In essence, being understood is hard, but that doesn’t mean we have to adjust who we are because someone doesn’t “get” us and conversely, we shouldn’t judge others because we don’t “get” them.   

We’re living in an age now where thankfully, weirdness is being rewarded because it fosters innovation.

Those that think differently and are different progress culture with fresh ideas and ways of thinking. So many years were spent stifling the strange that we’re only now realizing that we sort of need those weirdos to keep it interesting. Things get kind of boring when everything is uniform.

Not everyone will understand your unique brand of you, but the people (hell, maybe even singular person) that does, will appreciate the shit out of it. People are not a one size fits all. We’re specialty, artisanal stores in Brooklyn that may make one sale a day and somehow continue to make rent every month or somehow get Ashton Kutcher to invest in us and become a franchise. Either way, we’re different.

So fuck it. Be weird, but don’t be a perv. No one likes a sexual deviant.