Wonderfully Weirdo

Embracing What Makes You Wonderfully You

Photography by Sutana Monae

Growing up I always felt… well… kinda weird.

I didn't have many friends as a kid. Probably because I often found more joy writing poetry and pretending my pencils were little stick people, instead of participating with my peers in class.

As I grew older my “weirdness” did not necessarily lessen, I think I just got better at hiding it in order to fit in. Eventually I learned that you can only wear disguises but for so long; until the cracks in the mask begin to reveal glimpses of who you really are.

In an effort to maintain the ruse I began drinking to numb the quarks of what I perceived as insufficiencies. This, of course, only led to a slew of bad habits, countless regrets and an addiction called alcoholism.

This not only left me feeling like even more of a weirdo, but a new kind of weirdo at that.

It wasn't until I stopped running from who I was and began to embrace all the quirks that make me me that I began to breathe again and live my real life for the first time in a long time. Throughout the journey there was one thing that I found consistently consistent and it gave me such confidence and hope:

All the things that make our world worth living and what it is today started out as some…