I love being different.
I hate being weird.
If you were to check your dictionary, you might begin to discern the distinction:
different, adj. 1) not alike; dissimilar 2) not the same; distinct; separate; other 3) various 4) unlike most others; unusual
weird, adj. (omitting those definitions which are obsolete or which pertain to the supernatural) 1) strikingly odd; strange; fantastic; bizarre 2) eccentric, erratic, or unconventional in behavior
Following the dictionary definition alone does not account for my emotional attachment to one adjective and my revulsion to another. But there is an important distinction: I am different. This is an inarguable fact, a reality for every living being in the universe which is the result of its unique DNA. Being different accounts for my interests, my appearance, my strengths and weaknesses. I am as different from you as you are from me. The contrast is democratic. Even the last definition, "unusual," bears no qualitative assumptions.
Look again at the definition of weird. Even the structure of the definition presumes a preferred normalcy. It is subjective. Someone must define what is "normal" before another can be defined to be "weird." It is not fact, but opinion.
In short, I cannot be deemed "weird" unless you have determined that I am so. If I seem "weird," it is your problem, not mine.
I do have eccentricities, and I cherish them. Such as:
I think in spirals, in spider-webs. To you, it sounds as if I just changed the subject. But there was a connection; you just failed to identify it. And when I am thinking, I often walk in a spiral around the room (or a circle, or a figure-8). Or, I play three notes of the D melodic minor scale on my violin...repeatedly. I might jump up and down or clap when I get excited about an idea I have. Or rock slightly if I am anxious or distressed.
I can be happy eating sweet potatoes and apples for weeks on end...except that I have learned I need other foods in my diet. So I eat granola, yogurt and a banana every day for breakfast. Vegetable burrito for lunch. Dinner is the wild card, partly determined by the other humans I live with, and frequently terrible, especially if pasta. I loved pasta when my mother made it, but now I despise it. Al dente it is tolerable, but because I am a very distracted cook the pasta gets overdone and turns out slimy. Don't tell my Italian relatives.
I would love to wear the same clothes every day, to avoid the stress of trying to figure out what to wear. I don't make those kinds of decisions very successfully. To me, I am trying to keep warm. To you, I am dressed like a homeless person, with two shirts and three sweaters too many. If you tell me to dress professionally, I will likely show up wearing a suit. I simply can't be bothered with the nuances of what constitutes "professional" and what doesn't. There are too many other subtle details demanding my attention, on topics far more engrossing than what I should wear to work.
That said, I spend a lot of time and energy fretting about my clothes, because they itch or the fit is off or I am too cold or too hot when I wear them. And attempts to rectify my discomfort by tugging on them or tucking or untucking them usually result in a disheveled aesthetic, like I just rolled out of bed. I know this, but I don't know how to fix it, except to continually replace the clothes that aren't working for me (usually with others that, ultimately, don't work for me).
I don't care what was said in your meeting or what gossip you have to share about someone else's divorce or who got voted off which "reality" show. I can't fathom why you don't find a discussion of Parkinson's ethnographic studies of the Maori enthralling, or why you aren't interested in learning the species of the 223 butterflies I observed on a sixty-mile stretch of interstate highway. Seriously. And sometimes when you are talking to me, the words suddenly become garbled in their meaning and it sounds like uoy era gnikaeps a ngierof egaugnal. And even though I might be able to repeat what you said verbatim, my brain won't have processed a word of it unless I repeat it all again to myself, two or three times...very...slowly.
I talk to myself a lot, which is just as well because I always enjoy what I have to say. Do you know how hilarious it is to s-p-e-l-l e-v-e-r-y w-o-r-d i-n-s-t-e-a-d o-f s-a-y-i-n-g i-t? (Apparently not...) I got used to sitting alone at cafeteria tables as a child. I enjoy solitude. It is not as stressful as being around others, because when I am alone I always know that I'm not annoying anyone. Except perhaps myself, but I can tolerate it. When I am around other people, I don't know what to say that they will want to hear, and I worry about what they will say or do, or whether what I said or did was the right thing or not. So I put on an act; any persona I can throw on like an invisibility cloak for ten minutes or twenty or thirty so that I can deflect the attention away from how awkward I feel. Then, if others think I am weird, at least they will not have seen me. They will have seen a parody of me.
Maybe you saw me in the grocery store the other day, in the cereal isle where I got frantic because the cereal bars I buy are always two feet from the end, second shelf down, but someone moved them to a new place, and even though the new location is apparently three feet over and one shelf down, I could not find the damned things to save my sanity. Or in the sandwich shop, where I attempted to order a sandwich with five people behind me but I got confused because the list of vegetables was not placed where one actually is to order said vegetables, and so I got flustered and lost the ability to speak altogether, and had to point and nod. Such things move me to tears, or screaming, if left unresolved.
Weird? Me?
If you are thinking hell yes, then think for a moment about whether anything in the above paragraphs piqued your interest. If I were a character in a novel, would you enjoy reading about me? Would my quirks seem as appealing as those of the main characters in television shows like "Monk" or "House" or "Bones"? Would you want to know more about what made me the way I am? What I want from life? What I hope to achieve? Would you empathize if my heart was broken, or be elated if I finally succeeded?
Think of Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Vincent Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Ghandi, Einstein. All interesting people; all "eccentric" by any measure. What makes "normal" so desirable? If a certain fictional detective hadn't stored his tobacco twist in his slipper and his pipe under the coal grate, and played random notes on his violin and speared pigs and taken cocaine and shot a VR in the wall of his flat, would his appeal have lasted so unflaggingly?
I am different. I enjoy being different. Different means I am interesting; different means I am worth putting up with, because you will have a great story to tell later. I am not "weird," because "weird" implies that I am something inhuman, something unequal and probably undesirable. Viewed as "different," you must know that you are equally different to me. But if I am "weird," how can you be certain that you are closer than I am to "normal"? And given the company of extraordinary eccentrics, who would want to be "normal" anyway?
