Think Different

I have always known I was different. At school I was the lonely quiet child, painfully shy and socially awkward. I had the odd friend from time to time, lonely types tend to find other lonely types but none of these people would be friends for life. We were only friends because we needed to be at the time, a friendship of convenience if you like.

Once I left school I already knew I was different I just had absolutely no idea how or why, just that I was and unless I wanted to spend my days lonely and alone then I had better try to make the most of who I was. So I cut my hair short, spent some of precious holiday job money on some new clothes and left London for Brighton. It was a brave move. I know it doesn’t sound it but it was.

In hindsight I still had no fucking idea what I was doing, what I was looking, or who the hell I was although for about 2 months I plunged myself forward into finding out. I pulled, repeatedly and loved every moment of it. I think my favourite was an older man (older to me anyway, I was 19 and he was 30) we spent a wild a passionate weekend together in his flat and I left with the smell his cum on me and wearing his jumper, as my clothes I had arrived in had been appropriate for clubbing, not for going home on the bus.

Then for reasons that even now still baffle me I forgot about my quest to find out who I was and I started going out with Mr Safe. I won’t go into that story here for a number of different reasons but suffice to say Mr Safe turned into an 18 year relationship and a 13 year marriage with 2 kids just to cement the deal. Except, after all those years of doing the ‘right’ thing I suddenly realised that if I stuck with this ‘deal’ I was going to spend the rest of my life being that person and never ever finding out who I really was or why I still had this strong suspicion that I was different.

I think from that moment on the marriage was doomed, although it had been slowly slipping away for a while but suddenly knowing that made getting out seem that much more important. It was one of the toughest decisions I ever made and although at times it was agony I have never ever regretted it.

And so a new chapter started, one that involved ME, and life and learning and eventually love by the humongous bucketful. Much of that journey is documented here in some form or other and the chapters keep coming. Life is full now, exciting, challenging, nurturing, fulfilling and different.

You see I have learnt something very important through all this; I am different, beautifully, insanely, strangely different but then so are you. It is what makes us, us, it is what makes us human. We don’t all like the same things, we don’t all look the same way, we don’t believe the same stuff and we don’t all get off the same way but why the fuck would we want to? I love my different and I am intrigued and interested in your different. I am who and what I am, a myriad of different experiences, emotions, moods, likes, hates, habits and impulses. I am happy with my different, at times I wish I had known all this way back when, maybe I might not have spent quite so many years be utterly terrified of my different but suspect if truth be told I was just not quite ready to be different and anyway if I had been maybe I would never have found my different partner!

When we look out of the window of our lives we are often bemused by what we see and it would appear that for most the need to find people who are the same or similar to us is a strong pull. I understand it completely but the problems arise when we find those people, band together and use our power as a ‘group’ to cast judgement and ostracize others because they are, or appear to us, too different. It is the way of teenagers, hence my school years, but when it is also the way of grown adults, who should know better, I can’t help but hate it. You are different too, you just are not brave enough to say it or live it, so do not hate on me just because I am. I look out of my window and I want to see you, but that can only happen if you are brave enough to let me. Accepting my differences has only ever bought me a great deal of happiness and freedom to be me and accepting other people’s differences has made life far less worrying. I love being different, how about you?

 

Think different, Love different, Live different!

Mollyxxx

Ps… Click on the icon below to see who else is joining in with Wicked Wednesday (The prompt this week is #different)