I had a very similar childhood experience, though I embraced the label of 'weird', because I recognized early on that I WAS different from the other kids.
My experience with bullies was also a little different. I only got bullied for a short time because I had my own anger issues.
Music was a good bridge to the cliques for me, because even though everyone thought it was 'weird', everyone wanted to hear more of it.
I always love reading about someone else's experience of being a well-adjusted outsider.
Also, I agree, this should be trending :D
It sounds like we would have gotten along well! 🪇
The other bullies actually protected me because I was always the first to discover things that later would become popular. But I actually took their interest in something as a sign to move on to something else, their interest always felt shallow and usually came around the same time the band started to pander to wider audiences.
Thank you for the kind words! ❤️
I found a new sense of purpose writing this! I don’t think we all need to like the same things orand we can strongly dislike things, but I want to encourage people to challenge themselves more to accept more, even if ultimately they decide they hate something, at least try to understand it!