The Story of Being Odd

How do you define odd?  Maybe, something or someone who is different than the mass or the person who is not like you. Or the person with a quirky personality. Maybe someone who seems boring. Seems quite different than what you say normal. You can define it in your own terms. With your own dictionary. But the world is so diverse, we grew up together despite having many differences. Don’t you think it’s hard to be normal than to be odd?

Odd is one of my favourite words. It’s a beautiful word which welcomes the diversity of the world along with its unconventional nature. There are many reasons for loving this word. I  already said I love this word because I always been odd among my friends and relatives.  In a way, I am happy to be odd. And, today I am going to explore the story of being odd.

We can't say anyone you need to be like this because it is simply unfair. The world is diverse, human beings are diverse and we have to respect this diversity. And, the world is diverse that’s why it seems beautiful. And I love this diversity of the world.

I come from a very conventional, normal lower-middle-class family. I had a normal childhood despite I was not normal in terms of my physical structure. I was quite odd in terms of how I looked. I was lean thin with a dark complexion which is not quite normal in Nepalese society especially in the case of women. That made me quite odd since childhood because I was not like my cousins and friends. I was quite tiny and dark among them.  And the people started to question over my colour, size from very early childhood that shaped me differently. The people and the world around me never been my inspiration. I never thought that I wanted to be like someone who was around me. I don’t know why but I hardly got the aspiration and inspiration around my world when I was a child. That made me odd among my friends because I wasn't like them.

Now I realize the beauty of being different. But still, people cannot accept the reality of differences. We are different because our background is different, our schooling is different and our aspiration is different. We cannot see all the people through the same lens. When  I think about myself. I consider myself margin of everything the colour, shape, behaviour. I am beyond how the girl supposed to be. I am like this because of the many dimensions of my own life. But people barely accept this reality, they just want to see the people like them, Now when I am writing this I remember that letter one my friends wrote for me, “ Dear Nirjala! I want to see your strength to strength, just like I want myself to. Keep being you, be proud of being different because being different makes the world interesting.” I love the phrase keep being you, it’s a beautiful thing. But in lots of cases when someone truly wants to be himself/herself then he/she becomes odd. Apart from this, we rarely have a culture of accepting the differences. We lack the culture of heterogeneity that’s why we have a narrow concept of normal. That’s why still we are negating the peculiarity of individual and the importance of alternative thought.

 Still, I am an odd girl for many people. Maybe boring, weird, eccentric or idiosyncratic.  In eighteen, it was quite chaotic, it was a loss of ownership, it was lack of belonging. Now it’s a liberating experience. It is the great sense of freedom. Indeed, it’s a weird identity which denies to be defined.