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Years ago I walked into a home and on the fridge was a sticker… “God bless the Freaks” instantly that person became my friend.
My whole life I have been called freak, strange, and weird. For most of my life I believed those terms were derogatory.
One day it hit me
I was jogging along the eclectic and colourful streets of Toronto, in a part of town that was strewn with graffiti walls, old store fronts that hadn’t been renovated since the sixties, and old bridges that were still strong enough to carry freight trains from one side of the country to another “how strange” I thought…then like lightening I stopped mid jog and realized how my strange equated to beauty.
My sense of strange meant something was different and “unique”…that word led me to realize I equated that with being weird. I am unique!
But there was still the word freak. That equates to Frankenstein’s monster, dr. jeckyll and Mr.Hyde, the werewolf, Dracula and all the other cliched menagerie of gothic creatures you could think of.
Not to mention the side show carnivals complete with the bearded lady, strong man and lizard boy.
But those were Kool I thought. I loved those things. They were sooo beautiful and unique to me. So maybe then I’m Kool too. Maybe I am a freak and weird and strange. Beautiful, unique and Kool. In that moment it all made sense.
It’s all Perspective.
We are born into a society that teaches that social Norms dictate a certain level and brand of what I considered boring, mundane and its own type of freak show.
Everyday waking up to the the same routine, the same job, the same desk, at the same time punching in and out.
But some people love that. So if I wanted to be respected for my new found love of my freakish self then I have to find respect for them too.
THAT was hard. I grew up in a 9-5 household. It was challenging. The unhappiness was palpable. So to find even a morsel of like for that way of being was difficult.
So a decision was made. I would stay away from that lifestyle and every time I was labeled “freakish” or “weird” I would smile and say thank you!
To this day I do. It has helped me embrace the paranormal ghost hunter within, the psychic that I am and help me delve more deeply into the world of magicks I am privileged to play in everyday.
I have come to realize it’s not the label that I embrace so much as myself. The labels are the descriptions of how Kool and beautiful and magickal I feel. How outside the norm and box I truly am!
Humans love labels!!!
Find yours even if it means do away with them all! Deep dive into the words that describe you. Make a list of what others who like you would call you, then a list of words people who don’t like you would call you (I had fun with that 😜) and find their positive equivalent!
This is an excercise not for the faint hearted because it will bring up emotions, thoughts, past hurts and wounds…good! Let it! The past can’t hurt you. Letting it might.
The twist ending…
The more I embrace these descriptions of self the less people tend to use them. It made me almost sad when my mother stopped calling me weird because I showed gratitude. I loved being called strange at school. It was something I accepted and now either people were accepting me too or they just left my life completely.
I realized this whole journey was about accepting myself. Loving myself, and embracing creativity, abstract way of thinking and growing out of the awkward, pimple faced, uncool clothes and haircut self into the badass psychic and esoteric I see today that I share with others!
This is not boasting or bragging. This is an article that is for you the reader to see how damn good and freeing it feels to step out of the norm and into the amazing you that you are!!!
So get out there and be the ghost hunter, the ouija board loving witch you are!!! Be the adventurous soul that travels around the world, is hyper athletic in your elder years! go get em!!! The world is your oyster when you embrace the , beautiful (strange), unique (weird), Kool (freakish) creature you are!
