Individualism

All my life I’ve been marked out as different from others, starting with my less than common name. In primary school I was the ‘weird’ kid, the ‘away with the fairies’ and does she ‘~still~ believe in Santa’ kid. As I begun to hit puberty I was quirky. I ‘wasn’t like other girls’, I was the loner for much of that time as well. I was once described as a question mark and the implications of what that means plagues me to this day, although for them it was an offhand remark. And as I begin to come into my own as an adult it springs up again, I have differing political beliefs, I live in a van, I’m continuing to not do the things that the people around me have been doing. But just as those who are painted to be ‘just like the rest’ are searching to be different, I am always hyperaware of the ways in which I am really just like everyone else. I choose to adhere to conventional beauty archetypes in the way I shape my brows, do my makeup and style my hair. I like to gossip about the mundane with my peers and I want to be a part of a community.

I refused to see the ways that I am different, because I always have been different. It was never a choice I made; in fact, I was actively choosing to try and fit in. I learnt what they found funny, I copied the styles they loved and I downloaded the music they played. To see myself as exceptionally different in any way other than to the extent that everyone is an individual is almost an affront to the painstaking measures the younger me desperately made in order to be in the ‘in’ group. I feel as though calling myself special is to have an inflated ego, to recognise and lean into the ways that I am different is almost deluded because after all, ‘I’m just like everyone else, aren’t I?’

But I am different, and it's not wrong of me to know that, or to embrace it. I spent too long trying to dull the ways I did not shine like other people, and in doing so I’ve crushed my wings, and forgotten how to shine altogether.

This is why I'm choosing the van life. It is completely different than what I was supposed to do, it diverged completely from the rails I was quietly gliding along on. Part of me thinks I should be at university, I should have a 9-5, I should be renting a flat, I shouldn’t be doing this. But I'm happy right now. I‘m feeling a kind of everyday happy that I didn’t think would be possible for someone like me. Taking opportunities and living life to the fullest doesn’t have to apply to what everyone else says they should, because I imagine most of those people are feeling displaced, surreal and ‘different’, in all kinds of ways. What you should be doing is taking the chances you want, set up the life you want. Rebel in even the small differences and I think maybe you might be seeing the possibilities you want and seeing the world as it could be, and not as what everyone says it is. This definition of the ‘world’ and ‘life’ is so exclusive to so many communities, that my struggle is insignificant. This is just my individual struggle under which I will be taking many lengths to see come to fruition. But I'm also aware of my communities. The places I'm actually a part of, not the ones I think I should be a part of, and not just superficial ones such as living in a van, but the very real, real-world issues that we need to understand, accept and liberate so everyone can celebrate themselves. A world where we all have bright futures and glows. We never have to dull to ‘feel’ right. I only write about my individual struggle, because everyone has one; it is not my place, nor is it yours to decide the struggle of communities and our society and large. IT IS EVERYONE'S DUTY, to see that the people they love, and the people those people love, are all able to be part of communities that best represents that side of their individual struggle. We all have many struggles, and we experience them in a kaleidoscope of range. Which is why one person can never truly be a spokesperson or ‘face’ because every movement has many.

The reason I struggled to accept my worth is because I feared it might put out someone else, that maybe I might be taking up someone else space or I just didn’t have the ‘right’ to feel that way because I couldn’t empirically measure or ‘pinpoint’ my difference. But me expressing my ‘special’, does not take away, it adds another pattern to the intricately woven tapestry of humanity.

Stop hiding yourself, express yourself, drink in others expressions of self, accept that your reality or their reality are not the only ones, but merely part of one great human experience.

Change, Growth and Acceptance, not ignorance is bliss.