Stay Awkward

I have a quote by Brene Brown that I like that says stay awkward, brave and kind.

I am an awkward person. I have almost always felt socially awkward. I have been quite shy for as long as I can remember. It’s probably because I am an overthinker. I over analyze.

It was much worse when I was younger. I was afraid to take up space. I would shrink myself to accommodate less space. I was like a cat curled quietly in the corner of a couch. What was even worse is that my awkward shyness would bounce up ten notches when I happened upon tightly knit groups of friends.

Especially if they were the “cool” kids. It was always the cool kids.

You know the ones. Owning their space. They always moved tightly as one. An intimidating mass. Carrying that air of rebel without a cause.

An easy response was to be angry with them. Who do they think they are? Why do they act like they are better than us? I remember the rest of the class, those of us who were not “cool”, scorned them behind their backs. Being mean made us feel bigger. The temptation to bond through a shared sense of anger is easier than to acknowledge the shared sense of shame. Our shame of not good enough. Our shame of otherness.

I thought I was past that phase. I am an adult after all. I embrace my uniqueness. Don’t I?

But then, after many years, it happened. And there I was again. That nervous little girl. My eyes searching for another point to look at. My hands literally trembling. I felt small again. And I wanted to feel bigger. I wanted to detach myself from the awful shame of otherness. Awkwardness. Anger crept in. Gave me a mask to wear to hide the hurt and shame. And when I am angry, I do not yell or hit. No, it’s a much more dangerous anger. It is a silent rage. The calmness. The determination. The navigation of rules and information as weapons. The shutting down of empathy and vulnerability. This anger frightens me. This anger is the opposite of who I aim to be. The opposite of who I know I am.

Shame, hurt and anger make for sickly bedfellows. Lying together, they cause memories associated with these feelings to become entangled. Those who used my otherness against me. Those who reminded me of my otherness. And everyone in between.

With such an entanglement existing, I am now angry at the wrong people.

I am better than this anger. This meanness. I can do better than taking this coward’s road.

And I am sorry. So sorry. Sorry to those I rejected and pushed away because I was wrongly afraid of them. Scared that they and the memories were one and the same.

I know that we are all human. We are broken. We are searching. We are all trying our best.

And the “cool” kids. Weren’t they just as afraid as us? Were they not also wrestling with feelings of awkwardness and not good enough? It is easier to hide in the herd. There is safety in numbers.

It is possible to not associate awkwardness with shamefulness. We can embrace our quirky flaws, and even our otherness. This is how we stay brave. This is how we stay kind.