Hi, I'm normal! I eat, sleep, wake up, go to work, and do the same mundane hobbies that millions of people across the U.S. do every day. But I also have, you know, a weird side. As a kid, I played dress up games like Stardoll, but I also destroyed my little cousin in Call of Duty: Black Ops - Zombies. I listen to Nirvana one day and then turn around and listen to "rapper" Ian while laughing at how he sounds like a White guy cosplaying as a Black man. I had a PS3 in 2016, even though the PS4 had been out for three years. Or maybe that was just because I was poor — who knows? Either way, I’ve always been a little offbeat. Not in a way that makes people uncomfortable, but in a walks-to-the-beat-of-her-own-drum kind of way — er, her own guitar. Quirky.

Even in elementary school, I naturally gravitated toward the "weird" kids, the ones who turned out to be LGBTQ before we even had the words for it. The ones who everyone whispered about in P.E. class. The ones who played Dungeons and Dragons way before Baldur's Gate 3 was a thing. The ones who were seen as nerds for joining Wednesday's lunch session of Anime Club (yes, including myself). Turns out all my childhood friends are LGBTQ+. Guess I wasn't listening to RuPaul for nothing.

As a teenager, I always felt different from other people. While most 13-year-olds try to find labels for themselves — especially as childhood adversity starts shaping their sense of identity — I began labeling every little quirk I had. I used to think being different made me special, that I was above listening to Fetty Wap and using Snapchat. Fitting into boxes has never been me, and it's pretty obvious from my interests. I love inline skating and playing my favorite video games, but I never considered myself a tomboy or gamer. I like all things black mixed with all things pink, but I rarely wear those colors in real life (like, ever). And don't get me started on listening to Slipknot one day and quiet storm the next — Teddy Pendergrass, anyone?

It gets quite frustrating sometimes, being me and feeling like I don't fit in a box when there are more "-cores" than Trump's executive orders.

But at 23 years old, I am normal. I know that I'm not the alien 13-year-old me thought I was.

Why?

Because I watched Love is Blind last season and screamed when AD and Clay broke up at the altar. Because I watched the Super Bowl and jammed out to Kendrick despite being a metalhead (and quite a fan of both). Because I like most of the modern web and don't miss how slow Windows XP used to be (if you didn’t have Flash Player, no Nick.com for baby). I used to feel, at a point, that I had to reject anything and all things new, and I missed out on a lot of stuff because of jaded millennials telling thirteen-year-old me that my generation's music was trash, that we had terrible childhoods, and we were addicted to our phones.

That last part might have been true.

My childhood may have been rough in some ways, but it wasn't because I got to experience the Xbox 360 era, the Wii as a cultural phenomenon, watching American Idol (Justice for Sanjaya) in its prime, going to Chuck E. Cheese and having a blast, enjoying the golden age of children's media and cartoons on VHS tape, Blu-ray DVD, Blockbuster, and Netflix DVD, and asking for my parent's permission before going online.

I wanted to be different so badly, and for what? What fun comes with not being able to relate to other people? To feeling like an outsider while your whole generation watches Euphoria and you're still stuck on The Simple Life from twenty years ago? Not knowing or appreciating what "YOLO" or swag meant while younger Gen Z treats them as an ironic meta post? I found out the hard way one night when I couldn't relate to most Vines because I was too busy idolizing MySpace at the time. A decade ago, I swore no one would ever feel nostalgic for the early 2010s — yet here it is, staring back at me on my TikTok FYP.

So yeah, I spent years trying to be different, only to realize that the Disney Channel cliche was right: being me was enough. You don’t have to reject modern society to be interesting. You don’t have to curate your personality like an aesthetic Pinterest page to be worth talking to. Being different is okay. Being you is okay. And, honestly? Just existing as a normal, regular twenty-something can make you stand out in ways you wouldn’t expect.

Take the skate park, for example. I’ve had people come up to me, unprompted, just to tell me how cool I was while I was just minding my business, doubting if I could carve the bowl without eating concrete. And I don’t think it’s the novelty of being a skater girl. People see things in us that we can’t see in ourselves. I just wish we could all see each other the way a fly on the wall sees us — without the self-doubt, without the inner turmoil to be different. Just as we are on the outside.