The Outsider

I’ve always had a tendency to feel on the outside of things. I feel like that all the time, like I’m different and special and nobody understands, like I’m the only one in the entire history of the universe who’s ever felt the way I feel or done the things I do. Most of the time that’s not true – often there’s someone else there just as nervous and uncomfortable as I am, or just as interested in whatever’s going on, or thinking just as deeply about the world. Logically, I know I’m not alone. There’s nothing incredibly unique about a teenager who likes books and analyzes herself constantly, but somehow, emotionally I can’t seem to accept that. I have to be special, alone in the world, the only one who’s ever danced in the rain or traveled to Ecuador or worried about their future. That bothers me. I don’t want to be the needy kid who yells out that “nobody understands me” whenever something goes wrong. I want to be realistic and understanding and smart – a person I can respect. Somehow that just never seems to work out…

At some point in elementary school, “normal” became an insult. I guess that’s the result of too much “be you unique self” propaganda – I ended up with this idea that words like “popular” were bad, that “weird” was what I should want to be. A part of me still wanted “normal”, wanted to be like the imagined “everyone else”, but I didn’t want to change or to put in the effort to conform. I wanted to wake up one day and magically be different, be how I was supposed to be. That of course never happened. Instead, I embraced strangeness, originality, weirdness. It sounds like a good thing, right? The little girl sets off to be herself. The trouble was, I had no idea what “myself” was. So, in my eternal quest for originality, it became different form everyone else, better than everyone else. As soon as someone else liked something I felt like I couldn’t anymore. I used to brag  about the stupidest things – my go-to in elementary school was the number of times I’d been to the hospital. Just like my lack of effort for “normal”, my “weirdness” was never very dedicated. I never did anything drastic, never showed it overtly, just let it sit in the back of my mind influencing my thoughts. I guess it came from that desire to be better. I always wanted to be better than everyone at everything. If I’m being honest I still feel that way, like I have to be the best at everything I do or it’s not worth doing. It’s an annoying mentality, a mentality that makes it hard to relax and just enjoy something. I have to make a conscious effort to forget about competition, because otherwise everything becomes a contest. The best way I can think to describe it is annoying – my own competitiveness annoys me. It makes me frustrated by myself. I’ve gotten better about it over the years, but whenever that petty need to win pops back up it makes me angry, because I don’t want to be that kind of person. Yes, competitiveness can be a good thing sometimes, a motivator and inspiration to succeed, but most of the time it just makes me angry over small things, or makes me unable to be a good sport – not just in sports but in life. When someone else wins something, I want to be genuinely happy for them. I don’t want to have to force it. Most of the time I have to do that, and it bothers me. It makes me feel like a bad person, and in the end that’s more of a failure than whatever silly contest I didn’t win.

The idea that “different” equals “better” still kind of holds, and I’m still figuring out the balance of individualism and compromise that allows the world to work. Sometimes a different perspective is a good thing, but absolutes are dangerous. I have a tendency to think that way, that x always equals z, when in reality life is more complicated. So I’ll keep working. I’m nowhere near perfect, but if I keep working at it, maybe someday I’ll be closer.