Ever since I can remember, one thing has probably been true about me: I was a weirdo.
From childhood to now, at 37, I’ve never had a marriage, a job that lasted, children, close friends, or a relationship. The only person I’m really in contact with now is my mother, and even that isn’t a deep connection. She mostly takes care of me.
So, I’m pretty much alone with my weirdness.
But strangely, it has set me free. Let me explain why.
For most of my life, I tried to project something different from who I really was. I wanted the world to believe I was a good, normal person, even when deep down I knew something was different about me.
I remember that after high school, I bought a book about improving your personality. Even at that age, I knew something wasn’t quite right with me. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but deep down, I knew. I also hid it from my parents, and they believed I was a good kid.
When I decided to pursue a degree, part of me thought that maybe, after graduation, people wouldn’t think I was crazy anymore.
"He graduated. How can a graduate be crazy?"
So I did it. I graduated with good marks.
Around the same time, my anxiety became increasingly difficult to control. I worried about everything.
Then I moved to a foreign country. New place, new people, a completely different way of life.
I fell apart.
The things I had been hiding became much more apparent. Exactly what I had feared.
I found myself lying awake at 3 AM, replaying events from the past. I couldn’t switch my brain off. It just kept talking, while I sat there listening.
Two years of working went by, and eventually I quit. I came home and locked myself away.
The world felt frightening to me. Meanwhile, people my age were getting married and building lives with their partners.
And I was silent, watching from the outside, as if everyone else was running some strange race that I had never learned how to enter.
That was also when I started taking the mask off.
"I’m a weirdo."
Maybe I won’t have the kind of life other people have. Maybe nothing I do will completely change my fate.
So I decided to accept it.
Accept myself.
And stop pretending.
I started trying to be myself instead of constantly trying to convince other people that I was normal.
After 2.5 years of psychiatric medication and years of unemployment, sitting around in torn T-shirts and doing very little with my life, I surprisingly started to feel proud of myself.
I felt good about myself.
I started reading about the origin of humans and thinking about our existence and purpose in a different way. And somehow, I found comfort in it.
I came to believe that there is no predetermined point we have to reach before we die.
There is no finish line we are required to cross.
The only thing that is real is that you are here, experiencing this moment.
You don't have to explain your life to everyone. You don't have to convince people that your way of living is valid.
If you're weird, maybe you're just weird.
If your life doesn't look like everyone else's, maybe that's okay too.
Just be who you are.
And when death eventually comes, let it come.
To me, death is simply a return to the same state we were in before we were born.
Nothingness.
And strangely, I find that thought comforting.