Since I graduated high school, I've thought a lot about how different I feel from everyone around me. I think a lot about it these days. I think I've always felt this way, but I never cared or thought I deserved to until I got to college. The feeling has never been particularly high-stakes. It's not like I'm institutionally barred from anything. My entire being is embarrassingly inoffensive. It's more of that playground bullshit: I don't feel like the other kids, and I don't exactly know why.
Most people have a story to go with adolescence-harboured sense of alienation. It's usually something like they were the oldest of six kids or they have ADHD or some shit. But as far as I can tell at my very young age, I do exactly what it says I do on the tin. I'm not as actively maligned for being "weird" as you have been(1). I fly pretty under the radar to most. I just happen to feel this way. Perhaps I'm secretly so empty and uninteresting that I willed myself into feeling out of step to get a desperately needed but totally unearned piece of personality. I don't know. What I do know is that this is how I feel, regardless of why.
I don't think I'm describing this feeling that well, but I know for a fact you already understand what I mean. You always do with everything, but I know you will especially get this. But I'll give it another go anyway: I feel like I am constantly outside looking in on everyone. I often feel like the world is something I'm not apart of, but something that I observe. That probably explains so much about me. Everything from my approach to other people to my sense of humour, music taste, and political views could be rooted in this feeling.
Ironically enough, I also believe everyone secretly feels this way. I think this feeling of outsideness just comes out of being conscious. Self-reflection is inherently absurd, so that's why it feels that way. No amount of self-aggrandizing can make this more unique to you than anyone else. But to know that you're not alone in feeling some way usually doesn't stop you from feeling it.
I speak of this all very sternly but I only see good things coming out of this feeling. Anything I've ever thought was interesting came from the same place - all cool books, thinkers, music. Frank Zappa (supposedly) once said without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. However, my tone is not unwarranted. I don't feel entirely good about my Special Snowflake Syndrome because I don't feel entirely good about myself. Often, if I feel different, then that must mean that I am wrong.
The pandemic totally exasperated this feeling, both in isolating me physically and being in a culture that never seems to be on the same page with me. I really believe that my anger about this era is as much about my identity as it is about mass death. I think one way, and it often overwhelmingly feels like everyone else thinks that exact opposite. You can think of the kinds of things I'm referring to. Ultimately, I think these kinds of experiences are going to build me a lot of character. But for now, with my mysteriously low self-esteem, going against the grain feels more like being delusional as opposed to moral punk rock. And it can really fucking suck to feel like the village idiot.
The thing is though is that nobody is telling me that I'm the village idiot (besides a handful of strangers I will die long after the five seconds I spent with them means nothing to me). I am telling myself this. Society isn't maligning me. I am. I'm my own enemy here, and that's critical for me to understand. I don't give a fuck when some drunk redneck scoffs at me from the corner of some bar and grumbles to his other drunk redneck friends to "look at the dipshit over there." What I give a fuck about is that on some level, I geniunely believe that he's right. And that's what makes feeling like an outsider uncomfortable at all.
The truth is is that I don't want to fit in with anyone. I want to fit in with myself. Everyone else can bite me. The only person I need to earn the respect of is myself, and that's going to be the great project of my 20s.
(1) It kind of surprises me how everyone in your life seems to tell you that you're weird. Do I think they're wrong? No. But everyone either reduces what makes you you or makes it out to be a deformity, both of which are stupid. It's too wonderful a quality to force into any kind of box. To say that you are weird would be like saying a strawberry is sweet.
-
Want to know something excruciatingly embarassing? I'll tell you why I wrote this. It was because J*den is doing a show in my city tonight. Yeah, I know. This again. You're probably wondering, "What the fuck does that have to do with anything?" Well, I'll tell you what: shows and my long-standing lack of going to anything make me feel especially cut off from the world. I am perfectly aware that is by far not the worst problem to have. For Christ's sake, people are dying in the streets. But as someone who has come to be known as the Music Guy, having an intensely limited connection to the community of music - where arguably 99% of its significance as an artistic medium and as a language comes from - feels especially weird to say the least. It's like I'm in exile from something I clearly love a great deal. And why that is is where it gets complicated: it's because of COVID. Surprise! Although I've eased up my pandemic-vigilance in the last year, I'm trying to avoid overly large gatherings for the sake of my mom, who has recently become immunocompromised (long story). That sounds perfectly reasonable, and admitting that with the thought that I'm being excessively cautious always feels unnecessary when I finally say it out loud. But, in spite of good intentions, I still feel like I'm wrong. Honest to the God I actively deny, I sometimes feel like I'm starving myself of cool experiences because I am a bootlicking coward. Kate, who is in the same boat as me, isn't being as cautious. And nobody is asking that she be. My mom is mostly cool with it, which makes me feel like I'm being overkill. I bet Antivaxxer Twitter would love to hear someone like me say that, that I have doubt about what the fuck I think I'm doing. It sucks. I'm so sick of feeling like this. I hate all this fucking doubt that I have. Sometimes I wish I had the arrogance of someone like Kanye West, where nobody on the planet could possibly tell me otherwise from what I've set out to do, because God damn it, it is absolutely justified by virtue of me doing it. I know this Ye doesn't really exist, but you get my point. I'm absolutely sick to death of me feeling and believing that I'm innately in the wrong.
I don't think I'll go to that show tonight, but it's not really about that anyway. This is about me and how I see myself.
-
This rant was super self-indulgent. Sorry. Next time will be better and less up my own ass. I'll talk less about how wahhhhhh nobody understands me!!!!@
