You know how sometimes it feels as though it is just you against the world? What if it is not always so, and sometimes it is really mostly you against yourself? What if it feels as though the world is against you because you agree with the world about who you should be? Here is what I am saying; there are a couple of things about me that make me a bit unusual. Even my own family calls me weird, and my nicknames, for as long as I can remember, have often had weird or strange attached to them. However, It seems as though at certain periods when I have felt that the world was against me, it was often because I was siding with the world that there is something off about me. That being different is wrong.

How does one side against oneself? It comes down to not making enough effort to get to understand oneself. It is hard to understand others, but one can do a better job of understanding oneself if one pays attention. Acceptance, to me, is often easier than understanding. So one can accept oneself while one learns to understand oneself; so one can say, in the meantime, that this is who I am and doing as such is what makes me happy, hence I will stand by it. In this way, when the world mocks you, it hurts less because you are stronger in the sense that you are occupying your own world; a world in

which who you are and how you feel counts. You are standing with yourself and for yourself. The world will always be outside you and this is good because that which is within has more merit than that which is without; what is without is harder to control but thankfully easier to keep out. I believe that it is impossible to stand alone for long when one stands in confidence for who they are and what matters to them. The right people will join you; you start cheering for you, and others will join you. When you stand up for individuality, you do so for something that we all have in common. We are all individuals.

I have come across people whom I have called crazy because there seems to be no other way to describe them in their unapologetic eccentricity; and I have called them such in full admiration. They seem encased in this beautiful wall of confidence that protects their uniqueness from those that would not accept it. It is clear that they are their own true fans; that they have learned how to be their own cheerleaders and have been rooting for themselves long before others joined in.