For a good portion of my life, I was the same. I liked my comfort zone. I thought everything that I personally didn’t do was weird. So like, if you told me 6 years ago that you did karate I never would have spoken to you again and I would have told everyone you did karate while laughing. I was THE BEST.
I think that at age 16, I became sort of a “real person” (meaning I would probably not die or call Ms. Cleo for 2 hours if left alone for a day) and for approximately the next 8 years, I stayed that same exact person. The kind of person that only did things that could not possibly stir up any judgment from anyone; and also the kind of person who judged the shit out of everyone else. I didn’t try new food. I wore all the cool trends, even when the trend was low rider jeans and my muffin top was 50 inches wide. I drank vodka sodas at bars that I stood in line for an hour to get into. I ran for 45 minutes on the treadmill 5 days a week listening to Black Eyed Peas . Honestly, I can’t say for sure if at the time I thought I was happy, or if I just have embarrassment induced amnesia, but when I look back at that time period I wish I could go back and strangle myself with my Coach “wristlet.” The word “wristlet” is fucking ridiculous. And Coach isn’t really for white people anymore FYI.
In general, when I look back at my life so far, I feel like I wasted a lot of time trying to be cool. In my social circle, that meant having the newest clothes, going to popular bars, bragging about your cardio routine, eating grilled chicken wraps, and constantly being in head to head competition with your “best friends.” I ALWAYS lost in the “being the skinniest” department and still do. But the friends that I have now, some of them right out of this very group I speak of, have also given up on this weird, fake, race to be the best at being typical, and have become their own weird, awesome, selves. They would rather die than talk about running and compare clothes and we are usually too busy eating and laughing to do that anyways.
However you look at it, following the crowd sucks. All it does is make you so self conscious and jealous of the person who ate 2 less bites of her chicken wrap…..bitch. The sooner you figure this out the better it is going to be for you, just so you know. If you let this go on too long and become an old person running around trying to find yourself, everyone will judge you and this time you will deserve it. Get it together sooner rather than later. I am not saying how old “old” is so shut up.
My point in all this is that the Haley of today is way better than the Haley of yesterday. The Haley of Christmas past would never write this blog. I used to turn my papers in upside down in class so nobody could see my feelings. These days I am so full of public emotion and you freaks keep lining up for more. Likewise, I haven’t followed a fashion trend in 3 years and I get more compliments on my outfits than I ever did when I wore a “shrug” or a skinny pastel belt or giant hoop earrings that made me look like TBoz.I am in a competition with no one and it feels GREAT. Not to sound cliché, but you have to let your freak flag fly before it’s too late. Everybody is too worried about themselves to give a shit about how far you ran, how much your purse cost, or how well you described slitting your wrists in your black journal with a skull on it ( I am assuming that Emos have some sort of popularity scale as well), so just do what you goddamn want. You will thank me for this someday, but I probably won’t know what you are talking about.
Here I am at " Hot Dog on a Stick" carrying around an eraser or 5 ants in my tiny wristlet. As you can see, I was someone to envy.
The title of this post was inspired by my uncle, George “Pilotwhale” Hayden. A great living example of rebelling against conformity…especially with his internet persona.
