The Different One

Tala Rassool

Find yourself alone in the world? Are you sad, detached, spiteful, or just in a world of your own? In your social circle, are you struggling just to maintain satisfactory human contact?

Who cares? In a world full of whining narcissists, today we’re all starting monologues on how our sad tortured childhoods hurt us so much. While there are some people who enjoy hearing details of another’s social pains, most of us are too egocentric to care. We’d rather tell stories about ourselves.

I myself find that being too revealing is dangerous, and my personal account is likely inaccurate. As time goes on, I see things differently anyhow. If I gave a personal account today of being The Different One, I am sure later on I would decide that no, that is not how it went at all. But still, I suppose I owe some sort of background to reveal how I came to have any opinion on this at all.

I was either retarded or a genius, depending on who you asked and when. I don’t know what made my parents decide to have me mentally examined. How do you decide that a three year old deviates from normal intelligence, good or bad, anyhow? I remember the specialist asking me questions like “Who is your mommy?” and having me stack three blocks. Somehow that made that person conclude that I was smart. My parents were snubbed by some other parents who were comparing their son’s IQ with everyone else’s and concluding that they were worthier citizens of the human race. I don’t buy into the concept of IQ unless someone is clearly developmentally disabled; it is just an elitist tool. In spite of that, I had a lot of trouble in school.

It was a waste of my time. All I really got out those thirteen years were some math skills and how to jump rope. I could have learned that at home in much less time. I was always getting in trouble, beating up kids who instigated me, not paying attention, and trying to figure out the why and wherefore of the place. My teachers were absolutely horrible. To this day I’d like to have a crack at them and make them doubt their supposed expertise on children.

I got in so much trouble that the school turned me into a silent drone. That is their idea of the perfect child. They used cruel and unusual punishment such as locking me in a closet filled with mothballs, to which I was allergic, all day and forgetting I was there, until my mother called at 5 PM and was told she was a worthless human being for creating such an awful student.

School officials made my mother take me in for all sorts of tests on my brain, hearing, and so forth, trying to prove that there was something grossly wrong with me. I hope they didn’t make my parents pay for those extensive painful exams that lasted all day. Something should’ve clicked in my mother’s mind when I, a seemingly healthy kid, was lumped in the hospital with patients with wheelchairs, helmets, faces blown off, and covered in shrouds — maybe they were dead. No one bothered to test my vision (no wonder she doesn’t read the chalkboard!) until our health day in fifth grade when the examiner became furious at me for not being able to read any lines at all on the Snellen chart. Everyone hated me and wished I wasn’t there; at least, that is what Principal Winegar told me.

By the time I reached middle and high school, I think all my problems were due to my elementary experience and the fact that I was living in two polar cultures at once. Home culture was very strict: couldn’t talk to boys on the phone, couldn’t have many friends over, couldn’t wear shorts around certain family members, couldn’t do anything that didn’t conform to the most severe norms and benefit the tribe. I was a product, a possession, something to brag about. I would have grown up locked in a room like a plant to be harvested if it weren’t mandatory to send children to school. Of course I loved the bad things in the outside culture and at school, but I didn’t know how to act. Now when I see how carelessly people have kids today, I am grateful for the way I was raised. But while I am not criticizing my parents’ methods, neither would I recommend them; my daily culture paradox was stressful.

And then in the nineties, when I had reached middle school, it was considered desirable to be The Different One, even though you weren’t actually different. Miss Bizarre 1994. On and on I went, until today, when I have some suggestions for today’s troubled youth:

1. Get out. Get out of your parent’s basement, out of your roommates’ evil clutches, and live on your own. Maybe start a family, a career, whatever. You will be so busy chasing the almighty dollar, trying to survive, working on something, striving for sanity, that you won’t have the time or need to feel Different. If you do, you simply won’t let it bother you because you are facing much weightier things.

2. Do whatever it takes to make you happy, and forget about the Golden Rule. Really, if your heart’s desires go against someone else’s wishes, don’t let guilt get in your way. Just go with your heart; it’s that simple. If we all balked at doing something “contraversial” the world would be quite dull, wouldn’t it? Society is full of bizarre and heinous deeds performed by humans. This is what makes it delicious, this is what we thrive on, and this is what makes us evolve in many ways. This is what gives us more jobs in corrections and health care. At least we won’t be stuck in a stagant rut, wondering, “What can I do, what can I possibly do with all of these strange energies and drives to get out of this self-pitying cesspool?” More than likely you will develop your talents in the arts.

3. Live as if you are being followed by a camera. Not in the dizzying reality-show way, but in the black-comedy documentery kind of way. If others could see the whole picture, that would offer an explanation of your behavior or misfortunes and make them acceptable. We so often forget about what we think and feel, instead focusing on what other people see and think.

4. So don’t be different anymore! It is easier to “be like everyone else” than to be different. But the very reason we are different is because we are uncomfortable being “like everyone else.” There is something about us that needs more than is available in living like a lamb in the fold. Physical or mental illness are exceptions, but even these things will not always make you The Different One.

5. Do not deny your past. Many of us move to a new location so we can change “who we are,” to meet new people who only see us as our New Self and drastically negating “who we are.” This may seem to satisfy you, since you will no longer apparently posess those personal qualities that caused you so much pain. But you will likely be selling yourself short, killing the best parts of you in the process.

I know several people who were social outcasts in school and decided to turn into someone else, only making themselves look like idiots. This usually involves becoming “trashy,” doing things associated with the loudest rebel in school who was on everyone’s mind for the trouble they got into, someone The Different One thought was “cool.” One girl I know became the exact opposite of who she was, only to become an addict, go to jail, and do other undesirable things. She used to be a friend of mine, blessed with beautiful talents and a sense of humanity, but now she can’t be counted on for the simplest thing. She habitually does things to hurt people, to justify the hurt put upon her in school. She looks like a fool to me, especially when she told me “If I was in school now, I’d be really popular,” a statement that only revealed her weakness and told me how damaged she was. She sees me as a link to her past and does not want anything to do with me.

Recently I ran into another boy, the silent one who sat behind me in math — not even a nice boy, just a silent person who resembled a troll, without anything pleasant about his personality or any talent. He was a male version of the aforementioned girl. He smokes everything at a rate faster than anyone I’ve seen, drinks, and uses whatever substance that might make him look “cool.” He tries to be as foul as he can, with obsenities and references to gay sex abounding. He spends his time going to strip clubs and picking up destitute fourteen year olds with children, because he feels “he can get chicks now.” He drives a customized truck and delivers pizza, only to try to gain the friendship of the people he delivers it to. Of course, he is still picked on for his behavior. Once I made the friendly greeting “I know you!” and he denied ever going to my school, stopped talking to me, and put on an unfriendly act. Every time I see him now, he scowls.

You can improve upon yourself, but denying who you were will only rot your soul from the inside. It is not something that can be done without forming mental illness. You simply can’t properly live a lie.

And the truth of the matter is, though most of us have considered ourselves The Different One, either in the past or in the present, we are usually wrong.