Weird

The day I realized I was weird I set up camp in my dully lit bedroom and seeped every single drop of liquid in my body out through my stinging eyeballs. My corpse lying on a messy floor. The window above me was wide open, I remember, and the wind blew by it, rattling the tin screen. It was a dark evening in a cold winter. And I was weird. And I was weird. And no one thought I was normal.

And these wooden floorboards would creak when I rolled on them and my window would shake. And my family would walk with thudding footsteps on the floor below. But no matter what I did, this tired and confused person, I would never be normal. My illusion of life falling apart inside a warped brain.

After the liquid had been adequately drained from my body, I stood up, and observed my room from under a heavy headache. Objects were different now, each one carrying an air of oldness, of quaintness. Of dust. Of belonging to a simpler time, inside a simple movie, watched by me at a simpler age. In an old house. On an old couch. With a cup of Milo and a distant relative.

My desk, my book case, my bed, my pens and pencils, my calculator, my posters, my dresser... All seeped out this air of nostalgic dust. This eerie, floating thing of the past. Only here to prove how far I’d drifted away. My headache hung over this messy bedroom of memories with the force of a dictator. And I collapsed under it, lying on the floor once more. And I couldn’t help but think to myself, Why should I ever get up?

I only got up decades and decades later, when I heard the family migrating upstairs. The heavy footsteps tortured and twisted the steps on the staircase and I heard them approaching like they were coming for me: for me. It’s horrific to be a teenager in crisis. Everyone’s coming for you. Your room is a small box on a grid of graph paper. Your mind is black as hot tar. Your teeth are white. Your eyes are big. Your body is soft as dough. And your head is not your own: you doubt the necessity of your lungs for breathing. And you’ll lie on the floor waiting for death to calmly eat you up, the wind swinging punches at your window screen.

Because the day I realized I was weird was also the day I realized that weird was not appreciated, no matter what lengths people go to to deny the fact. Not only was weird not appreciated, it was not accepted. And you could catch the vile thing like a virus. But could you throw it out like an old soda can? Could you stomp on it and destroy it, and then kick it, as far away from you as possible?

I didn’t think so, lying exhausted on the floor. Oh, no, no, no, no, I did not think so. I did not think so. After all how long had it taken me to realize my own predicament in the first place? How long had I walked down the sidewalks and the plastic school hallways, completely oblivious to my distinct aura of weird, weird, weird. Of the mark on my face and my hands and my arms, covering me like freckles. How long did I not even feel it? And then to come crashing under the weight of it all: you hope that realizing it is enough.

Do we have to act now, too?

Because there is only one life worth living, and that is that of the social norm. Of the upstanding yuppie mother, proud of her three blonde children in their clean polos and pastel converse, the lacrosse games after school, the honor societies, the shopping bags from Whole Foods and the low-fat yogurt in the massive fridge in the pretty kitchen... There’s only one life to live if you want to live well, and that’s that of the yuppie child. We all want to be the yuppie child.

Who shot us in the back of the head, who stabbed us in the chest? Who made our hair dark and put mud in our veins? We all want to be the yuppie child and what propels you off the floor of your bedroom, snapping you out of a paralyzing sickness-- is the fact that you can’t. You simply cannot.

You simply cannot. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry for you.