If you knew me, at least talked to me once, you would instantly know one of my personality traits: I'm weird as hell. 

I used to think being weird was awful. I would try my hardest to not be weird and to just act as normal as I could possibly be. I would act how I saw girls on tv act, I would think only about how I could look like everyone else, and most of all, I tried to hide nearly everything about myself from people. In middle school, I would come up with elaborate lies to make myself seem "normal" and relatable to other girls. I remember I would force myself to wear skirts, Hollister tank tops, and super glittery, sticky lipgloss just because I thought thats how I was supposed to be. I would try so hard to be that person that I thought I should be rather than actually make myself happy, and guess what, it sucked. 

Middle school was the most depressing time of my life. I'd never felt so alone and so out of my own skin in my life. People knew who I was for all the wrong reasons, I was bullied, I hated myself. That's not what I wanted. I never wanted that. All I ever wanted was to be liked. But, then again, who doesn't want to be liked? As humans, we all strive for acceptance. We all want to be accepted by some type of peer or colleague and that will never change. With everything you do, you will seek acceptance and praise. Right now, for instance, I'm wanting people to look at this and relate and be happy I posted it, and thats okay. That's the good kind of acceptance and want to be accepted. And the line between the good and the bad is a very thin one. 

I think it was around freshman year that I started developing my own sense of myself again. I had gotten out of feeling sorry for myself and I wanted to remember being happy. I wanted to go back to the person I was before faking everything about myself.  I experimented a lot and I rediscovered a lot of things I loved and I came to realize that I'm different. I'm the black sheep amongst the herd of white. And that's okay. That's not just okay, it's fantastic. I think the day I let go and just accepted myself was one of the best days of my life.

Now, I wear weird clothes, I do my makeup somewhat extreme on some days, I'm not afraid to blab on about the things I love because I know I'm weird. I understand I'm weird. And when you have that ultimate knowledge of what you are, people will just be like "Okay. Great." No one, and I mean anyone who will actually mean something to you, will crucify you for being yourself. I'm not saying you won't get comments. I get them all the time. I cannot tell you how many people have said something about what I'm wearing or what I look like simply because it's not normal. I've worn my creepers to school, and keep in mind mine are the four or five inch ones, and people have just stopped and stared. They're not weird to me. I think they're beautiful. But apparently, to everyone else, they're weird and must be gawked at. I had a girl look at my shoes, poke her friend, and laugh, even point. But I don't care. Because this is high school and that girl is a close minded prick. She laughs because she simply does not know. Because she is not able to wrap her mind around the fact that not everyone is a size zero, or wears frosted blue eyeshadow and cami's as shirts. 

I've moved on from making people happy. I want to make my friends and family happy and they're happy just with me as I am. So why should I make myself be someone or something else to prove to everyone else that I'm "normal"? What even is normal anyways? Who set out these specific guidelines and said "this is the status quo"? No one has and no one will because no one is normal. No one will ever be normal. We are all weird freaks and we should accept ourselves as such.

So here I am, on my laptop not afraid to tell the world that I, Cassidy, am a complete and total freak. I'm weird and I love it. I love graveyards, I love video games, I'm freakishly obsessed with zombies, I like to learn the dying words of people, I collect pictures of people I've never met before and most importantly I am myself and I would never want to be anyone else. If I can accept myself, you can too. I promise you, if anything, it's okay to be weird. Weird is awesome.