John Lennon once said, “It’s weird not to be weird…” Being weird has no age limit… Don’t you think it’s time to embrace your weirdness?
These are lessons I learned in my 37 years of life that wish I could have gone back and applied them sooner, but I guess it’s better late than never. If we didn’t go through the things we did we wouldn’t have learned the things we did.
I spent a lot of my childhood being the weird kid and I loved it. As I got older, as many of us do… I lost that sparkle that set me apart from everyone else. I let society dull my shine. I stopped smiling, I stopped laughing… I even stopped being me.
“Being yourself” is something we all strive for time and again. When we are younger, I feel it was the easiest time for us to be who we actually are. Then as time goes on we get older and are exposed more to the world and… it slowly changes us. Sometimes for good, sometimes we get overwhelmed and lose ourselves in the process of trying to navigate the world. Then you hit a certain age when you are older and you just don’t care who likes you… As long as you are happy.
1. Self-expression is essential
Self-expression is essential for development as a human being. It helps us to form opinions and understand the world around us. Plus, it directly contributes to your emotional well-being since it affects your sense of self-worth.
Growing up my self-expression was suppressed. I know it was. If you look at pictures of me at a young age I wore the weirdest things. I always wanted to be different. I loved color and I wanted to express that. I also loved all things witchy and gothic. When I was in middle school/ High School I was NOT allowed to walk out of my house wearing black lipstick.
According to my sister, “it looked stupid” but who was I hurting by wearing black lipstick? I was ONLY allowed to express myself as long as it fit someone else’s standards. If I wanted to dress alternative/punk/goth it was not okay for me to do because I would “be embarrassing”.
When I wasn’t allowed to do the things I wanted and express myself through clothes, make-up, and hair color. It really made me sad. I feel like I lost the chance to get to know myself. It could have just been a phase or it could have become my everyday look. Either way, my self-expression was limited unless I wore a look that appeased everyone else. Then I was “allowed” to wear “what I wanted”.
Lack of Self-confidence
With what I said above it really did affect my self-esteem. I have talked about this before but from a young age being “chunky”, “Fat” or “Plus size” whatever you want to call it but from a VERY young age I was trained to hide myself. Be as small as possible. You are already fat… Don’t draw more attention to yourself by wearing weird things.
Once I hit middle school I really had to hide all the things I liked. I slowly started changing who I was to “fit in”. I was lacking self-worth and masked my “inner demons” by pretending to be another person.
When trying to fit in I would look around at all the popular girls and find a thing or 2 that I thought made them popular. It could have been the way they put their hair behind their ear. The way they laughed. Dressed, and did their hair. If it was something I thought “made them unique”. I would slowly adopt it as my own.
Fast forward to me as an adult and starting this whole blog because I lost myself more and more over the years. Taking on different roles… Daughter, Sister, Girlfriend, Employee, Side piece, Homewrecker, fiance, Stepmother… Every decision in my life shaped me into a person I didn’t recognize anymore.
I am not saying my WHOLE LIFE was a lie and I pretended to be a completely different person. But how I was out in the world was an amplified version of myself that I thought people wanted. Over the years I had a good time. I met a lot of amazing people. Some I took for granted, some I should have NEVER allowed getting that close. Again I lost myself in wanting to have friends. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be wanted and I made some not-so-good choices trying to achieve it.
2. Stop caring what other people think
The hardest thing you have to work through is not caring what other people think. I know a lot of us say “We don’t care”… But in reality deep down we do. And there is nothing wrong with that. There is absolutely no problem wanting to be liked by others. But you have to really take a step back and ask yourself “Are you trying to be liked by the wrong people?”
I feel like if you have the “I Don’t Care” mentality and this is just purely based on what I have learned looking back on my own life is that… If you have the “I don’t care” mentality… Subconsciously you already know that you are seeking the approval of people who don’t really matter.
The saying I came up with and constantly have to remind myself of is that: I may not be everyone’s cup of tea and that’s okay because I am actually coffee eventually I will find my coffee lovers.
If they are not financially supporting me in some kind of way, living in my house or in a relationship with me they don’t get a say. And really those 3 types of people get a say but it doesn’t mean I will listen. STOP RIGHT NOW! It is time you start living for yourself.
3. Embrace Your Weirdness
Another reason why embracing your inner weirdness is a good idea is that it forces you to take risks. Pretending to be someone you’re not, makes you feel safe; this protects you from the risks associated with being yourself. Instead of taking risks, you can avoid problems by staying in character and ignoring any issues that arise. However, embracing your weirdness – whether childlike or adult – allows you to take risks and solve problems in creative ways. You’ll learn how best to express yourself when you don’t feel like worrying too much about the consequences of your actions. This frees up mental energy that can go towards schoolwork or other interests outside of schoolwork.
Self-expression is also key when it comes to building relationships with other people. People tend to like and trust others who are themselves rather than pretenders or dramatically altered versions of themselves. It’s best to adopt an authentic personality so that you appear genuine at all times. If you change your behavior frequently, people won’t know how to respond appropriately to each shift in your personality. Instead of forming deep relationships, they’ll end up getting stuck dealing with short-lived fake versions of you that don’t fully understand them either. Instead, find friends who will hang out with you consistently – without requiring you to change who you are for each occasion.
Embracing your inner weirdness is crucial for emotional well-being and developing positive relationships with other people. People tend to trust and like those who are themselves – regardless of their age – while fake versions make life much easier by eliminating risks and problems with trust issues altogether. Ultimately, learning when to be yourself and when not to be yourself will help better both your mental and physical health in the long run.
My Alter-ego Mikka
When I look back at my life, especially in my 20s I realize I had somehow created an alter ego for myself, and a lot of people from my past that I now disassociated myself with only know me by that alter ego. Up until 2019, when I started this blog I went by the name Mikka. An ex-boyfriend gave me the “nickname” in 2006 and told me it was the Russian version of Michele. Which I thought was cool, very sexy, and mysterious. I loved it.
Mikka was the life of the party. She loved to drink, and do drugs (smoke weed, Xanax) I wasn’t looking for anything harder. I was dumb, but not that dumb. Mikka was involved in ALL the drama. She went to Karaoke every night of the week and was in a 5-year abusive relationship. She was the homewrecker, the side piece. Good for sex, but not for a relationship. She did not give a fuck where she was getting attention from… she just knew she wanted it. Good or bad.
I probably had the most fun in my life during my Sasha Fierce phase. (You know Beyonce’s alter ego) But it was also the lowest point in my life. The confidence Mikka had was all for show. When I was home by myself I was Michele… sad, lonely, and depressed. Nobody around me knew.
Michele… is nothing like that. Michele wants to be the life of the party without the drinking and drugs and is happily in a 10-year relationship. We stay home and watch our TV shows. Mike and I don’t know how to go out because we left that life behind when our relationship got serious.
The moral of this story is to be a reminder to myself… So when I run into a person from my past and they call me “Mikka” I know whether to say Hello or run in the opposite direction. LOL
Find that Self-confidence
Taking everything I have said so far into consideration, it’s clear that having a positive attitude toward yourself is crucial. People with self-confidence tend to benefit greatly from expressing themselves creatively. They can learn to internalize their positive attributes and build confidence upon a firm foundation. On the other hand, those lacking self-worth can do what I did and mask their inner demons by pretending to be another person.
Internally I was lacking self-confidence and didn’t know my worth. Which led me down a dark path of drugs and alcohol. I did it because I thought it was cool, but then it became a coping mechanism for all the other shitty decisions I made in my life.
4. Be Weird
I have talked about this earlier in this post that I have always had a weird sense of style but over the years I suppressed what I liked in order to “fit” into society’s standards and it wasn’t until last year I started really expressing myself again through my clothes, hair, home decor, or the things I share online.
I really hid all of the cool things that made me… ME. There was this pressure to be Susie Q Homemaker, to be a loving wife and the perfect Stepmother. I spent all my time focusing on all that to lose myself even more than I had before. If I wanted to have a job or to be taken seriously I couldn’t have purple hair, tattoos, or piercings.
I didn’t think that people would like me if I told them I like Oddities & Curiosities… Sometimes stranger the better. I am just a naturally curious person and just want to know how things in the world work or why they look the way they look. I just wanna know.
I felt like that made me weird. I was embarrassed.
It is okay to be weird. Weird is the new normal. Normal is the Pinterest version everyone sees on social media. It is the “Beauty Standards” pushed on us by society. By men with power and “influence”.
My philosophy now is the weirder the better. There was no and is no reason to be embarrassed to like the things you like. You are who you are and that person is amazing.
5. Don’t be embarrassed
Have you looked around the internet for the last 10 years or so… ????? There is a place for everyone to express their interests. There is no need to be embarrassed. I think growing up in the 90s before the internet became a thing… A lot of us grew up to be closed-minded (some stayed that way) and that is because of how we were raised.
When the internet became a thing we had two options to learn and grow and accept all the weird things the internet gave us access to or use that access to spread hate. Some still do that to this day.
So if we liked certain things we would be shunned for it. Some snooty kids would say things like “Eww, you like California Dreams??? (IYKYK) I would DIE if someone MADE ME admit that in public to people” or some shit like that.
And when you are young you want to be liked so you slowly start changing your likes and your dislikes. I will share an example in the next reason why that is NOT a good idea to start doing.
Just know a lot of people on the internet still like to act like snooty assholes to people. Why? To make themselves feel better about their shitty lives. Because nothing makes a person feel better than trying to knock another person down who is shining a little bit brighter.
You know the saying “Misery loves company” that still rings true today. No matter what you do someone somewhere will points something out about you to make you feel bad, or embarrassed. Since they will ALWAYS find something you might as well be happy doing and talking about the things you love. Don’t be embarrassed
6. Don’t change to fit in
From the ages of 5 to 18, a lot of my “quirks” and “mannerisms” were influenced by all the people around me. It was kind of that situation in Mean Girls…
I saw Cady Heron wearing army pants and flip-flops. So I bought army pants and flip-flops.
My handwriting was not my handwriting back in the day. I had ugly ass handwriting, but I wanted the big bubbly girlie handwriting so I faked it. Now that is naturally how I write.
I was your textbook definition of a pick-me girl.
Pick-me girl (plural pick-me girls) (slang, derogatory) A woman who claims or acts as if she is unlike most other women, in order to gain attention from men. Provided by en.wiktionary.org
I AM EMBARRASSED TO ADMIT THIS… But in my 20s (for a LOOOOOONNNNGGGG time) I pretended to like Sushi. All of my friends LOVED sushi. I wanted to try it… I have never had it before. I was trying to push myself outside of my comfort zone.
It was hard making friends so I had FOMO that if I said I didn’t like it I would not be invited to hang out. This goes back to lacking self-confidence and wanting to be liked.
I had to sit through sushi dinners time and time again. Only to go home hours later so hungry because I just couldn’t eat it. I am not saying it was all bad, but if it had a fishy taste… NOPE NOPE NOPE. I can’t do it. I have the palate of a toddler and I am okay with that.
I am a try-sexual… I will try anything once if I don’t like it… nope not again. If I do great I have expanded my horizons.
It was tough living a lie. I don’t like sushi. It was good to get that massive secret off my chest. It feels good to tell you guys.
You do not need to change to fit in. I REPEAT… YOU DO NOT NEED TO CHANGE TO FIT IN! I am sure my friends would have liked me either way, but at that moment I panicked. Don’t be like me and have to fake liking something for 10 years. It’s not worth it.
7. Find like-minded people
Be who you are and the right people will come your way. I always thought that saying what stupid. Doesn’t really annoy you when a parent or an adult figure says something that you think is lame and then when you get older you realize how right they were. That annoys the shit out of me.
It always makes me wish I took the advice sooner rather than later, but I am a firm believer that things come to you when you need them the most. Be it advice, money, friends, or relationships. Everything comes and goes. Everything has its time and place and its season or reason.
People, things, and events come into our life for a reason and a season, the season could be short or it could be long and the reason is unclear until it’s time for us to understand it differently. Hence the stupid sayings or advice parents give. It didn’t make sense then, but it does now.
Anyway being weird is the new normal. As I said earlier it has no age limit. Embracing your weirdness opens up a whole avenue to find like-minded people. Hanging out with people who share common interests brings out this confidence in you that you didn’t think you had. Be true to yourself and embrace the shit out of it.
Having like-minded people sharing your weirdness really makes life a lot easier.
Embrace Your Weirdness
The main importance of embracing your weirdness is to free yourself from overthinking each and everything you say or do. Living a life embracing your weirdness is better than living a life with little white lies all around you. It is exhausting. I know I lived that life.
What you see is what you get is a great life motto to live by. I know it’s annoying to hear especially from some rando lady on the internet but you are amazing just the way you are.
If you have no clue where to start when it comes to embracing your weirdness I am here to help. Here is a list of other blog posts that I think will help you in bringing your weird ass out.
Daily affirmations for self-confidence
How to be confident in yourself
Start living for yourself
Becoming the adult you truly wanted as a child
The ABCs Of Personal Growth from A- Z
How to romanticize your life: Appreciating life to the fullest
When it’s time to find new friends
Where and how to start your self-improvement journey?
I could add a bunch more but at that point, I should just tell you to read ALL of my posts. Because I have been there and some days are still there. I am constantly questioning myself trying to figure out the real me. I spent roughly 28 years changing and hiding all the different parts of me. It is gonna take some time to get through it all. All I know is that the girl on the left is a very different girl from the right just trying to find a common ground. I can see ya girl is getting her love of color back… Good for her… er…me!
Leave a comment below and let me know if you are embracing your weirdness. If not what is holding you back?
Until Next Time, Have a Great Day! Remember you are a badass!
