“I’m weird & I love it.” Now sing that to the tune of LMFAO’s Sexy & I Know It which was all the rage back in 2011. It works, right? Right. Ok, onto more serious stuff…

If you know me, you know I love rock music. Well, a week ago today a band called Beartooth released their latest album The Surface. One of the more recent singles off the album is entitled Might Love Myself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83rcK9Xne5A) & it perfectly encapsulates the positive self-love anthem of the record. If you know anything about Beartooth, you know this is a MASSIVE change for them. Frontman & primary songwriter Caleb Shomo has been very open about the severe depression he has struggled with from his teens on through his entire adulthood. In fact it has been the primary theme of most of the band’s music. But over the past two years he has finally found his way out of the darkness of self-loathing & learned to love himself. I for one have thoroughly enjoyed watching Caleb’s transformation into a happier, healthier human being- it’s so inspiring! The music on this album is every bit as heavy as before, but there is now a clarity & soul in Caleb’s voice that shines through in an undeniable way- & that alone is enough to make this their best album to date.

Anyway, the reason this is relevant is that today’s post is all about embracing the fact that I am in fact a bit weird- but I LOVE that about myself! Now, I have never struggled with the kind of self-loathing that Caleb has (or that my husband has), but I have definitely struggled with various forms of anxiety, depression, & OCD tendencies for most of my life. I wasn’t always AWARE of it, especially in my younger years, but the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized that my brain really is a bit different than most. For better or worse, I am definitely prone to a melancholy personality- which is not to say that I’m sad all the time. Not at all. It’s more that I’m overly serious & struggle to truly relax (my husband is the same way). Moreover, it’s been a major theme of my life that I frequently find myself feeling like a bit of a loner. Again, not necessarily that I don’t have friends or everyone hates me, just that I often feel like I’m the only person in any given group who doesn’t feel like or agree with everyone else. To put it simply, it’s been a common refrain in my life for people to tell me I’m a little weird or different or not like they expected me to be (for whatever reason).

Now as a child/teen, as you can imagine, hearing this kind of feedback (whether directly or indirectly), wasn’t always encouraging. Sometimes it felt like a punch in the face. After all, there is nothing kids/teens want more than to “fit in,” to be accepted, to NOT stand out too much (at least not in a negative way). But I learned at a very young age that I was never going to be able to be “cool,” that no matter how hard I tried I would always be too nerdy or too smart or too quiet or I wore the wrong clothes or whatever. I would always be just a bit outside of the “cool” realm. Naturally I ended up finding acceptance with the other nerdy types which was more than good enough for me. Now, as an adult, I’ve come to really enjoy when people tell me I’m weird or that my tastes are nerdy or that I’m just not what they expected. Because nowadays such things are usually said in a more positive manner. They’re usually said with an undertone of “Wow, you’re interesting!” rather than “What’s wrong with you?” Even if this kind of feedback occasionally is a bit more negative, as an adult, I just don’t care. While I still sometimes find myself wishing there were more people in the world like me, just so I’d feel less “different” at times, in the end I realize that it’s my uniqueness that makes me who I am. And I LIKE who I am.

As stated previously, I’ve never struggled with true self-loathing, but nowadays I am a lot more positive about myself than I was years ago. And the best side effect of that is that I am SLOWLY learning to be less of a people-pleaser. I have learned that some people cannot BE pleased anyway (because they will always find something to complain about). Moreover, being a confident person who stands up for her beliefs is enough to turn some people off – because they like living in their echo chambers & don’t like anyone contradicting them or encouraging them to think outside their own little boxes. The point is I am finally learning to be ok with sometimes being disliked. I don’t think I will ever completely rid myself of the desire to be liked but I have learned that what my mom said years ago is true: It’s better to be respected than to be liked. Respect is worth a lot more, in the end.

Having said all that, I thought it would be fun to create a list of things that make me weird, unusual, or whatever adjective you want to use to indicate being a bit outside of the norm.

• Thanks to my OCD tendencies, I never let me email inbox get cluttered. Furthermore, I never leave text messages unread for more than a few hours, & I almost always respond in a timely manner. It feels like I’m leaving something undone if I don’t, & I hate that feeling.
• I keep any cash I have in order in my wallet- in other words, larger bills at the bottom, smaller bills on top, all facing the same direction. If they’re not like that, it creates a level of anxiety that is disproportionate to the “crime.”
• I still sleep with stuffed animals. No, my husband doesn’t mind. He wouldn’t be my husband if he minded. Furthermore, I still collect stuffed animals. I even bought a small stuffed Covid virus back during the pandemic. And somewhere or other I still have a stuffed herpes virus & a stuffed neuron (brain cell) I got in college. Not kidding. As someone told me just yesterday “That is some real nerd stuff.”
• My husband & I don’t wear our wedding rings. We’ve been married for 12 years & he has never worn his regularly, & I haven’t worn mine regularly past maybe the first year. I couldn’t tell you the last time I wore them. It’s been years for sure. This is one that REALLY bothers some people, which I find strange because if it doesn’t bother us (& obviously it doesn’t), why should anyone else care?
• Again, my husband & I have been married for 12 years but we have never had a joint bank account or credit card. We split the bills, with him paying a bit more than I do since he makes more money than I do, & we pay for our own “miscellaneous” expenses which works out great because neither of us can whine about the other spending money on something we don’t value. Someone once told me this was “un-biblical.” While I know the person meant well, I wish I’d had the presence of mind to respond that banks didn’t really EXIST in biblical times, which made the comment quite irrelevant. (Insert eye roll here.)
• Despite my predilection for rock/metal, I don’t have any tattoos. I have no problem with tattoos- I quite like them as a general concept- but I have never had any particular desire to have any myself. Neither do I have any piercings aside from basic earrings. Nor do I wear black all the time. In fact, aside from band T shirts that are of course disproportionately black, I rarely wear black at all, unless you count black yoga/athletic pants.
• I didn’t love the baby stage, especially the newborn stage. I struggled with PPD which of course colored things a lot for me, but even so, I’ve just never been someone who really loves babies. I do not miss my child being younger. I never get sad when I think about her needing me less as she grows up. Quite the opposite- I’m usually cheering. “You want to take a shower by yourself now instead of me helping you with a bath? Fantastic!” Of course I have good memories & fleeting moments of nostalgia, but trust me when I say they’re fleeting.
• On a similar token, I don’t dread the teenage years. I LIKE older kids & teenagers. You can have so much more interesting conversations with them. They really have their own personalities & likes/dislikes by then. They are – in my opinion anyway- so much more rational. Yes, I know, I am crazy. You won’t find my volunteering much at my daughter’s school nowadays but in a few years, I’ll probably be happy to do anything I can.
• Aside from a little football here & there, I genuinely don’t watch TV anymore (& never have much), not even Netflix. I just prefer to read. I’ve always got so many books that I want to read that I just can’t find time for television. And I truly don’t feel like I’m missing anything of value to me. Does this mean I’m left out of conversations at work sometimes or that I am oblivious to certain TV/movie references people make in general conversation? Yes. But does it bother me these days? Absolutely not.
• I actually like cold weather. It’s the heat that I find suffocating, depressing, & soul sucking. But when I feel a chill in the air, my spirit soars.
• I actually ENJOY going places alone- whether it’s a restaurant, a movie (not that I’ve been to a movie theater in almost a decade, but I did used to enjoy going to matinees alone on occasion), or a concert. Being alone in a crowd doesn’t bother me. I love to people watch. I love my own company. If that makes me weird- well, as far as I can tell, I got the trump card.

I could go on & on, but if you’ve read this far I think you get the point. Some days are still a struggle, some days I still feel like maybe I wasn’t made quite “right,” like there’s something “wrong” with me. But in general I’m in a better place now than ever. Coming back to Might Love Myself by Beartooth- as the song states “I’m exactly who I want to be.”

My challenge to you is to find whatever makes you weird or different & celebrate it. And if you can’t find anything, that’s ok too. Regardless, the more you love yourself- which sometimes requires actively changing your behavior if you find things that need work- the better your life will be & the more you’ll be able to truly love others, even those who are very different from you.