It’s July: Let Your Freak Flag Fly

I had this lovely and fairly somber post all written up for today but I’ve decided to postpone it. Because another idea just popped into my head and it’s not going to leave me alone til I let it out.

The idea took root as I looked at pictures of a friend’s trip to Portland, Oregon. In the background, goofy hipsters with dirty hair and skinny jeans, a sign reading, “Keep Portland Weird”, and an ATM covered in graffiti.

I currently live in a city that reminds me of those bookshelves you buy at Office Max and have to assemble yourself: they look pretty nice, but god, they’re boring.

So this visual reminder of the weirdness that is Portland (and much of Oregon) touches, painfully, my own weirdness and my many fruitless attempts to contain it. I grew up in a family that wasn’t really OK with weird. I attended a high school where deviation from the norm was summarily punished. And of course, we’re not a society that celebrates “difference” as a matter of course.

About a year ago, I dated a guy who I trusted with my inner oddness. “You’re weird,” he said to me one day with a giant grin and light in his eyes. I shrunk from the compliment at first, afraid of it, and then grew into the idea, proud that I let my freak flag fly.

‘Cause here’s the deal: I’m weird. So are you. We all are. I know it, you know it, but we fear expressing it because of our own history with punishment and loss. We fear being ostracized by our groups. But the weirdness is there, living and breathing and longing to express itself.

For me, here’s how the weirdness comes out sideways when I try to keep it tamped down:

• I spill things on myself. This is why I never wear white. When I try to be normal I inevitably slop the stickiest, stain-iest substance within arm’s reach all over myself. It’s like I’m being tagged as a wild critter.
• My hair is a wreck. My hair knows the truth about me, and it inevitably stands on end when I try to pretend I’m not weird.
• I trip over non-existent impediments. When I attempt grace or dignity, stumbling blocks manifest out of nowhere, or I run into furniture that magically moves across the room to meet me. I am perpetually tattooed with bruises, evidence of my inner weird.

I bet your odd self has it’s own ways of grabbing your attention, of reminding you that for all your trying, there’s a hint of crazy in you that craves some fresh air and freedom.

When I see evidence of weird in my current city – mohawked teenagers, or the guy who carries his cat around town in a snuggly – I want to run up and hug them. I want to shout my thanks for their daring, for reminding me that life is not meant to taste only like vanilla.

And when I see people who our society really deems weird – the transgendered kid in Northfield, or the two gay teenagers I chatted with in North Carolina last weekend – I want to hand them a medal. The pull to be “normal” is so strong. My eyes tear up at the bravery of those so passionately committed to honoring their true selves.

See, we are not projects. We are not meant to be improved, or tweaked, or worked on. I believe, absolutely, that most of our problems arise because we stop honoring our true selves, not because we are inherently flawed.

Addiction, compulsion, depression: these are conditions of the soul.We manifest destructive weirdness when we (individually and collectively) forget that our natural selves are beautiful and whole from minute one. Destruction enters in once we’ve bought the lie that something inside of us is “wrong”.

We are not problems to be solved, but miracles to be understood, cherished, and loved. We are each one small facet of divinity, worthy and whole simply because of the fact that we were born. Period. End of story.

So what do you think? Are you up for letting your freak flag fly today? Are you ready to put aside your self-criticism and self-doubt in the interest of your happiness?

Let it roll, I say. Let.It.Roll.

Advertisement