the weird kid to weird not kid pipeline

I was a weird kid.

At least that's what I think my aunt meant when she called me antisocial when I was 7.

For a while after that I wore the term like a brand on the back of my neck, if I tilt my head to the side the silvery scar tissue shines in the sun. It became an extension of my name, and every introduction became “Hi my name is ‘Jay and I'm kind of antisocial.’ But you can just call me Jay.”

(I found out later that a seven year old not wanting to talk to a grown adult they see sporadically throughout the year doesn't make them antisocial. Astounding stuff.)

And I really wasn't antisocial. I'm almost scarily good at making friends, it's a skill that's easy to perfect in a few simple steps:

Step 1: Worry that you're antisocial and develop a burning desire to fit in with your peers.

Step 2: Observe people long enough to determine their interests and what kind of social interaction they prefer to engage in.

Step 3: When ready, select a target and engage in regular conversation within the observed acceptable parameters. Note that being consistent but not overwhelming is vital to not being classified as clingy or annoying.

Step 4: Continue this process until the desired level of companionship has been achieved.

Congratulations! You’ve achieved your goal of being viewed in a positive light!

I’m not officially diagnosed with anything but this list will certainly make an appearance should I ever pursue one.

This to say, making friends isn't that hard for me, but sometimes I do things, or say things, or like things and other people will think it's weird. It's weird that I “laugh too much.” It's weird that I'm “crying over a cartoon.” It's weird that my friends and I read books outside of literature class. I shouldn't choose an anime for the class word game because all the normal girls wont get it.

At the end of it all it shouldn't have mattered, not when I did have friends that indulged my weirdness. It was OK that I renamed my phone's Bluetooth to my favorite voltron character, they'll just call me Pidge from now on. It was OK that I’m writing yandere y/n fanfiction of the anime guy of the week, they'll write one for me too and we can swapsies.

It shouldn't have mattered. But it did.

Here's a fun fact, you can be burnt out of being weird. Or being considered weird.

So I took a break. At least in my physical life. You couldn't have gotten me off of twitter back in 2018-2023 if you tried, the gay people in my phone were there. (They're still there. Kye come to Bluesky please this is no longer a request) It was easier to be weird among the other weirdos, where I could just block or mute or ignore anyone that made it hard to be myself.

In person however? I hardly talked about my interests. I didn’t think anyone would care about what I had to say. I didn't want to get strange looks, or be called strange, or asked why I liked watching people roll dice and scream at the results. I built up a wall of supposed disinterest and sticked a note on it that said “nothing to see here! Feel free to move along.” I told myself that there were different versions of me, and that no one I knew in person would ever know that version of me. The real me was behind a screen, up until 2am willing writing 1500 word essays about the morality of podcast characters.

Then the pandemic hit and we were all stuck inside. I ignored the schoolwork that I for some reason still had to do, even though the world had come to a standstill. (for everyone except the KFC staff, who were ‘essential workers’.) I had nothing to do. nothing except get even weirder.

I watched cartoons, and anime, and rewatched the entirety of Dan and Phil's Sims series. I put together closet cosplays for D&D characters and dueted much more professional cosplayers on tiktok. I researched fungi until I dreamed of being consumed by mycelium systems and shedding spores when I walked. I realized first that I was a lesbian, and then that I was genderfluid, and I slowly started to knock down the walls I had built around myself. I could be myself, what was ever stopping me?

When the dust settled, I was a strange creature emerging from stasis.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one.

Apparently everyone came out the other side weirder than ever.

Dressing alternative or emo is cool now. Being neurodivergent, a thing I had struggled with my entire life without knowing, was cool. Being into anime was cool?? And we’re called weebs now? (I prefer otaku, and I've decided you'll take that from my cold dead hands.) And its. Nice. It's cool that being weird isn't the end of the world anymore, ( it never was) that kids can look around them and see the weirdest people being happy and carefree and feel. Safe. They can have some hope.

I’m sure that bullying and being considered weird hasn’t gone away, that would require much more societal introspection to happen and frankly, we are a long way from that happening. but I think people grew up, realized they can do whatever the fuck they wanted and it would have significantly less consequences on their lives than they thought and collectively went “Huh. OK.”

But that doesn’t really mean the little voice in my head has completely gone away. Some days, at the most random of times I get the “Don’t say that, that’s weird, whats wrong with you?” And I have to consciously force quit that train of thought and rewrite that coding. It’s weird, but that’s fine. Either people relate or they don’t and that’s not really my problem anymore.

Turns out i like being weird, I like it a whole lot. To all my fellow weirdos out there, hello I love you please stay passionate about the things you love until the end of time, there might be a little kid out there that you’re inspiring, you never know <3