Flying your freak flag.

When I was younger, I was awkward. OK, even more awkward than I am today. I was tall and skinny, but not in a supermodel way. More like in a newborn-giraffe-on-water skis kind of way. I was all knees, elbows and a bouffant of home-permed hair.

I was also a weird fish in a very traditional fish pond. I didn't understand why I was different from all of the people around me, I just knew that I was. I also understood that if I showed my true colors to anyone, things would be difficult. Even more difficult than the hell of being a weird kid in a town full of non-weird kids.

I recently reached out to someone from high school to catch up. I wondered if she had changed and thought to myself, "It is kind of embarrassing how little I have changed." But then I realized that I have changed in a huge way: that little girl who was afraid to show her true colors now lets her freak flag fly on the daily. I have grown into my oddities and grown to love them. My diarrhea of the mouth and flamboyant style are no longer things I try to hide, they are things that I wear with pride.

I hope to instill this willingness to embrace your weird into my children. I hope they don't end up hiding their quirks like I did and being paralyzed with fear over being different. I hope the wave their freak flags with wild abandon and use them to attract like-minded beings that love what makes them different.

I wish the world promoted individuality instead of imitation. I wish we could all try less to conform and more to be unique. Because how boring is a world filled with beige carbon copies of one another?

If you share this post, I will buy you a pony. I suck at Twitter. I am OK at Facebook. Pinterest is my bitch. I am also on Bloglovin' and Instagram.