#THE BAD: HAD SOME OF THE MOST DOGSHIT MENTAL HEALTH IMAGINABLE

[edgebug]

it's my BIRTHDAY

[outsidism]

Like, or be liked

Since the beginning of my life, I've had this feeling that I was weird, when I was a child, I used to feel insecure about my wrists being too small, later in life I hated how I looked for having almost no chin, aside from physical appearances, there was always something about my life, compared to others that felt not normal, like commuting to school when my classmates were all from around the school or like not having a Wi-fi when all of my classmates did. Thinking about it now, none of it was that weird, probably not weird at all, but nevertheless the feeling was there and it continued to be there, one example was, and still is, that whenever I'm signing up on a website and I'm supposed to choose my country, more often than not it's not on the list, many activities that people do on the Internet cannot be done in the normal way or at all as an Iranian, and that, while not too big of a deal, has had an effect on me mentally. One specific reason that I can think of, that it's perhaps had more of an effect on me than my fellow countrymen is that I'm not really engaged that much in the Iranian culture, I don't follow the Iranian news, I don't communicate with people that much and overall I haven't invested in the Iranian culture if that makes sense, I don't wanna say I don't belong because I don't belong anywhere else either, but I've never been interested, I've been more interested in the way of life of Americans for example, it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's a topic for another time.

Another aspect of why I feel weird, which I want to explore further, is more related to my personality, in contrast to what I described above, which was somewhat imposed on me. As you grow older, even in childhood, but specially as an adult, you're expected to behave according to social norms, I see how hard people try not to look bad or weird to others, how much of their time, energy and mental peace is spent doing everything that is expected of them right and more, but that is something that I've never been good at, communicating with people has always been a struggle for me, it's perhaps been the root of most of my problems but there are other things that I simply don't like. For example I've always hated taking showers, or going to the barbershop regularly, or washing my clothes or buying new ones. I hate formalities, I hate to do something I don't enjoy that has no benefit other than confirming one's normalness to others, and finally, my priorities are somewhat different than most people, I prefer for example to buy a fancy laptop than a better car. In a different world where things were simple I would just live the way I wanted, problem solved, end of story, but there's a reason every single one of those social norms exists, I can say that there are at least a few of them that are straight up stupid, but things are not so black and white for most of them, you can't just look like dogshit and smell like 15 year-old trash and expect people to treat you with respect for instance, some of those formalities are also there to know how to show your respect to people, among other stuff that I don't like to do is eating fruits, but eating fruits is supposedly good for your health. So as a consequence you have to choose which side of the spectrum you prefer to lean towards: I choose left, as in being free to do what I want, but with a balance, I don't want to smell like 15 year-old trash, have no manner or eat fastfood to death, but I also don't want to be a slave to society or spend all of my time and energy on formalities. A few years ago when I fell in love with this girl and consequently realized I have zero idea how society works or how I should behave in it, I decided to change everything that I was, good and bad, I even hated on my hobbies and interests, looking back, I can't even begin to imagine how scary that life would've been, living in an alien world as an outsider, becoming what I never was and never liked, in my fallen mind, it was all worth it, and perhaps it was, I still believe communication with people is the best skill one could ever have, but people are different and not everyone can have anything, so I prefer to stick to what I can have and what I enjoy, in a way, I'm accepting my weirdness, I don't even believe I'm that weird anymore, everybody thinks they're special, and they're right, just not in the way they think they are.