I gotta share something with you:
As I age, and, now, living where all I have to do is take care of myself: physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually I am given time to reflect, to discover, to dream up adventures for myself, and to become more aware of my weirdness’s that have not extinguished as I age.
I am multi-talented so, when I am working on one, other talents have to wait. Sometimes it makes me frenetic and disjointed, if I let it. When I feel like I am progressing in one area, it leave the other areas vulnerable to me just putting them away and finding them, later…much later... and I either redo it or continue on it. Every weakness I have seems opposite to the strengths I have. I am an eccentric soul but, some find me endearing. I embrace these weird traits as just part of my personality. As my friend Bonnie says, “I think you are an alien”, when something weird happens to me. If you spend much time around me, I show you bits of my true nature; a slight glimpse:
As we become more self-aware, and aging gives you the time and space, we are confronted with whole we are, deeply, sacredly, aware, of our personal nuances. We are uniquely individuals, plowing our way through life. We have been busy with outward lives. We have struggled through our teens, and some of us have drug parts of that teenage-personality into our adulthood. Our ‘weirdness’ is not a negative. We have done a massive job surviving to our ‘agedness’. In fact, most of us would see our little weirdness’s as things we would have hidden, but were expressed, unconsciously nonetheless. Our weirdness’s help us be truly ourselves, in fact, they make us original; set apart, sometimes through tyranny, sometimes simply ways of soothing ourselves.
We know that Japanese sculptures will actually break a piece of perfect pottery and then replace the broken parts, adding gold to the fracture(s) to highlight the imperfection. That is what we should do, we should accept the beauty of our weirdness’s.
I have a few I can think of, or that I am aware of: I have caught myself whistling under my breath during quiet times. I wake up and there is music in my head and I realize, as I am sitting out in the morning sun, for instance, that I am whistling low, beneath my breath. I have tried to be conscious of it and try to name the song I have been unconsciously whistling. Is it for comfort? I try to sort out what makes me whistle so. I am a “stimmer”. I bounce my knees. I tap my fingernails on surfaces. I used to love biting the skin on the back of my hand – which may be an expression of my infancy. My adoptive mother said I had sucked a red bump on the back of my hand from sucking on it. They put socks on my hands. As well, I bit my fingernails through childhood. Perhaps, even smoking is an expression of that infantile reaction to abandonment, rejection, lack of nurturing until she got me. And, yes, the whistling.
Stimming is a self-=regulating behavior, natural, that a person uses to regulate emotions, to manage sensory input, and can be associated to ADHD or even autism. Stimming is a way to deal with our anxiousness or stress. It gives a sense of comfort and control. It seems to help with frustration. (When I am frustrated, anxious, angry, I choose to walk in circles, talk myself down. and sort myself out.) These kinds of weirdness helps us deal with thoughts, or life, in general, and soothes us with situations that overload us. Stimming releases endorphins that help us focus, is pleasurable, and is a replacement for being able to give words to what is stimulating us. (When I was a young wife, I used to catch myself pinching at my throat rather than speak the words that needed to be spoken, in fear of the reaction of another.) All of this is about adapting, personally, to outside, and inside, forces.
Have people ever pointed out an odd trait you have? Have you become self-aware enough to find those odd behaviors that it seems only you have? Why do you think you do them? Do you try to hide them because you have thought only you do such? Did you place negative connotations to “weirdness”?
Let us celebrate those personal things we do as what makes us real, gives us comfort, allows us to deal with life.
©Carol Desjarlais 7.12.25
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