THE WEIRDO

I. Origin I was born with the wrong face for this world. Not ugly— just off. Like a photograph taken a second too early, everyone else still arranging their smile while I was already looking at the camera. My mother loved me. That is the kindest thing I can say about my beginning. She loved me the way you love a stray dog that keeps showing up at your door— with pity, with hesitation, with the quiet hope that someone else will take it in. My father looked at me once and then looked away. He never looked back. I have spent my whole life trying to figure out what he saw in that single glance. Maybe nothing. Maybe that was the problem. II. The Children Children are honest. That is their cruelty. They knew before I did. They smelled it on me like an animal smells fear— the wrongness, the not-quite-rightness, the thing that made me a target before I could speak. They called me names I will not repeat. Not because they hurt— because they did not hurt enough. Because I learned to wear them like a second skin, and now I cannot remember what I was called before. I sat alone at lunch. I sat alone in class. I sat alone in my own head and built a world where I was king, where the children who mocked me begged for my forgiveness, where my father looked at me and saw something worth seeing. I lived in that world for years. It was better than this one. I am still trying to find my way back. --- III. The Mirror I have a complicated relationship with mirrors. Some days I look and see a stranger who has been living in my body without paying rent. Some days I look and see nothing at all— just a blank space where a person should be. I have practiced faces in the mirror. The smile that says I am fine. The laugh that says I am not dying inside. The nod that says I agree with everything you are saying while my mind is screaming I am not here. I am not here. I am not here. I have gotten good at the performance. So good that sometimes I forget I am acting. IV. The Way I Love I love wrong. I love too much, too fast, too hard, like a drowning man grabbing at anything that floats. I have loved people who did not know I existed. I have loved people who knew and pretended they did not. I have loved people who took my love and used it as a weapon, and I have thanked them for it. I do not know how to love softly. I do not know how to love without making it a cage, without making it a cage without making it a religion, without making it a reason to wake up and a reason to stay awake and a reason to never sleep again. I love wrong. But I love. That has to count for something. Please tell me that counts for something. V. The Weirdo They call me weirdo. I have heard it so many times it has become my name. I answer to it now. I introduce myself with it. Hello, I am the weirdo. Pleased to meet you. I will probably say something strange and then apologize for it and then say something stranger. I have learned to laugh at myself before anyone else can. It is a defense mechanism. It is also the truth. I am weird. I am strange. I am the thing that does not fit in any of the boxes they built for people like me. But here is what they do not know: The weirdos are the ones who survive. We are the ones who learned to make homes out of our own skin when no one else would let us in. VI. The Thoughts My mind is not a quiet place. It is a crowded room where everyone is talking at once, where every voice is mine, where every voice is telling me I am not enough. I have thoughts that scare me. I have thoughts that would make you look at me differently if you knew. I have thoughts that arrive uninvited and refuse to leave no matter how many times I ask them politely. I have learned to live with them. I have learned to let them sit in the corner while I go about my day. I have learned that you cannot fight your own mind and win. You can only learn to share the space. VII. The Outside I do not know how to be around people. I stand too close. I stand too far. I say the wrong thing. I say nothing at all. I laugh when I should be serious. I am serious when I should laugh. I watch other people move through the world like it was made for them— easy, effortless, like breathing. And I wonder what it feels like to not have to think about every word, every gesture, every moment of every day. I am tired. I am so tired of being a translation of myself. VIII. The Mask I wear a mask. Not the kind you can see— the kind that lives under my skin, the kind that smiles when I want to scream, the kind that says I am fine when I am falling apart. I have worn this mask so long I do not know what is underneath. Maybe a person. Maybe a monster. Maybe nothing at all. I am afraid to take it off. I am afraid that if I do, you will see what I have always known: that I am not like you, that I have never been like you, that I will never be like you. And I am afraid that you will leave. And I am afraid that you will stay and see everything and leave anyway. IX. The Question Do you know what it is like to be a question that no one wants to answer? To walk into a room and feel the temperature drop? To speak and watch the eyes around you glaze over? To exist in the space between included and excluded, never quite belonging to either? I have spent my whole life trying to figure out what is wrong with me. I have made lists. I have asked doctors. I have asked God. I have asked the mirror. The mirror never answers. God never answers. The doctors give me words that do not fit the shape of my loneliness. X. The Confession Here is the truth: I am not broken. I am not wrong. I am not a mistake that the universe forgot to erase. I am different. I am strange. I am the thing that does not fit because the boxes were built too small, because the world was built too narrow, because the people who made the rules never imagined someone like me. I am the weirdo. I am the outcast. I am the one who watches from the corner and writes poems about it. And maybe that is enough. Maybe that is more than enough. Maybe being the weirdo is the only thing I have ever been good at. --- XI. The Promise I will not apologize for my strangeness. I will not shrink myself to fit into your comfort. I will not dim my light so you can feel brighter. I will not pretend to be normal so you can pretend to accept me. I am the weirdo. I am the one who does not fit. I am the one who never learned how to be anything other than myself. And if that makes you uncomfortable, good. Sit with it. Let it teach you something. XII. The Invitation To all the other weirdos: I see you. I see you hiding in the corners, laughing too loud, standing too close, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. I see you. I see you trying to fit in and failing and trying again and failing again. I see you. I see you writing poems at midnight about a world that does not want you, about a love that does not see you, about a life that does not fit you. I see you. And I want you to know: You are not alone. You have never been alone. We are a nation of weirdos, a tribe of the strange, a family of the ones who do not belong. We are the ones who will inherit the earth. Not because we deserve it. Because we are the only ones who know how to live without needing it to love us back. XIII. The Ending (Which Is Not an Ending) I am still weird. I am still strange. I am still the thing that does not fit. But I am learning. I am learning to make peace with the parts of me that the world cannot hold. I am learning to build a home out of my own ribs, out of my own breath, out of my own stubborn refusal to be anything other than what I am. I am the weirdo. I have always been the weirdo. I will always be the weirdo. And that— that is the only thing I have ever been certain. ZEAH ZITHRI / BJF