It Has Never Been Easy

I often wonder when those around me gave up. When did they give in and conform to what society wanted them to be? When did they give up on themselves? When did they abandon their dreams, their hopes, their ambitions?

I'm not mad at them for conforming. It doesn't make me angry. It makes me sad sometimes, but I can't really blame anyone for giving in. I know exactly how difficult it has been, to always try to be me, even when that "me," hasn't always blended in very well.

I often theorize, that everyone enters adulthood with some intention of being an individual. But it's hard. People are uncomfortable around individuals. They are much happier when they can put others in neatly labeled boxes. He's a Republican. She's a Democrat. He's black. She's Arab. He's Irish. He's a hunter. She likes to do crafts. He writes in his spare time. She likes to play tennis on weekends. It's all very sad. Even more so, that often times we allow ourselves to fit into these boxes.

I realized as a child, that my thoughts and ideas were different than most of the world around me. Granted, I was raised in an extremely radical religion. Anyone thinking for themselves, at any level, would be different than those folks.

I remember when I was 12 years old, how baffled I was that my peers would make fun of each other for masturbating. Especially amongst 12 year old boys, these put downs could be vicious. I could never figure out why they made jacking off seem like a bad thing. It was often the most fun thing I did at that age.

Then I smoked weed for the first time. Why did potheads get such a bad rap? Getting high was fucking awesome and despite all of the negativity that we were taught about drugs, I was determined to get high as often as possible, without getting caught by my parents.

I remember attending church in my early teen years and hearing that God loved everyone. Even my classmates, almost none of which attended the same church that I did, believed it too. I'm not sure that I even knew what an atheist was when I was 14, but I was aware that almost everyone around me seemed to have an unshakable faith in a god that I couldn't understand.

I remember reading Time and Newsweek Magazines in the school library. There was a major famine in Somalia. I couldn't understand why this god cared so much about me and all of the other people in my small hometown, but why the hell didn't he care much about these young kids in Somalia. I saw their pictures in every magazine, in the World section of the local newspaper. You could see their ribs. Their bare-breasted mothers held them, their eyes already dead. Where the fuck was God? Why wasn't he in Somalia?

And I went to college, the great bastion of ideology. I didn't seem to blend in very well in college either. In fairness, it's probably an awkward time for most of us. I learned that if I was loud and outgoing, no one would notice that I was lost inside.

And I drank a lot. And I did some drugs. And I got more lost inside, which caused me to drink more. And I came to a point in life, where I was only comfortable if I was drinking, so I drank. And I drank some more.

All the while, I heard people talk about how much of an individual they were. I heard people encouraging me to "just be myself." I didn't understand this, because everyone telling me these things all seemed to be just about the same as everyone else.

And I got sober. That was the start of a really awkward time of trying to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be.

And here I am now. The beautiful thing is that over the course of my 36 years of living, I've managed to find some people that are similar to me. Some of them enjoy the things that I enjoy in life. Others don't understand all the God hoopla either. Then there are the artists and poets and activists that I've gotten acquainted with.

And here is the moral of today's column: I tried really hard to blend in for a long time. I was never good at it. I don't care to blend in any more. I won't give in. I won't conform to being that box-able guy that makes you comfortable to be around. I only want to be me today. It's not easy. It's almost never easy. But it's worth it.