Rules. A neutral, five-letter word. A word with little emotion, really. But for me, the cause of relentless anxiety. My need to follow every paragraph, every line, every word, a personal hell of my own doing. Whether it was verbally stated or written out, it had to be done.
I can proudly say that I've improved this quark over time, and I no longer let it consume me. But that wasn't always the case. This "quark" as I refer it, turned middle school into a self-created nightmare. Unfortunately, I can recall embarrassing moments the quark caused me with great ease.
That "fun", "easy" culinary class was a live-streamed Hell's kitchen. The vague recipes for simple dishes causing me unwarranted anxiety. I had to read and wholly understand every numbered step of every recipe before I'd touch any knife, fork, or spoon. And even then, I'd have to re-read every line as a continued each step, just to double-check, just to be sure. I was way too excited when I had clean-up duty. I was the weird kid who pleaded to switch the sought-after chef's knife for the lowly dish rag.
But that class was insignificant compared to the biggest challenge I faced: my "friends". You would think that it would be friends who'd ease up the burden I had to deal with in school, and yet, they only furthered the anxiety. They thought it would do wonders to turn the quark into an insider, and with the brilliant idea came to the nicknames and the jokes. My middle school yearbooks a sickening reminder of that horribly thought out idea:
Maybe if I had chosen better friends, I'd have dealt with the oddity earlier and had a decent middle school career. Instead, I forced myself to laugh at my own anxiety and pass off the anxiety as nothing, if only to keep those few "friends". Whenever they decided to bypass a rule such as walking the hallways with no permission, I tagged along and enveloped my worry into little more than shaking fists and an ill-fitted smile.
It was a sad realization I came across the last day of school that I was relieved, no, ecstatic to leave that dreaded place. I was going to a school I knew for a fact my "friends" had no thought to go. Freedom. I was "their little spaz" no longer.
When I became a freshman, I thought I could hide the quark better and gain compassionate friends. While I didn't get the first, I definitely achieved the latter. They picked up on it with my reluctance to skip a class, such a common misdemeanor. Or maybe it was my inability to skip the long lunch lines and instead wait patiently till there was five minutes left of lunch. But they did more to help me than my previous "friends" could claim. What did they do? Nothing.
They didn't try to "fix" me with their own ideas, nor did they try to goad or persuade me into breaking/bypassing established rules. They accepted me and my little quark with no regrets and it was just that acceptance alone that helped me tremendously. It was my own trying to hide the quark and pass it off as nothing that caused to wreak havoc. This, however, didn't mean my quark left me be.
In fact, just weeks before I went back to school, I received a letter saying we could wear jeans to school. The week before, I went on to the site and saw that jeans were not on the dress code list online, and freaked out. I had to immediately e-mail a guidance counselor who assured me it was true. Even then, the ride to school was spent with anxious thoughts consisting of "What if he was wrong? What if I'm the only one with jeans? I'm going to get in trouble". The only end to these thoughts were when I counted 20 people who were wearing jeans themselves.
I am not a spaz; one oddity does not and should not label me. If we were judged and ostracized for one aspect of our personality, what a sad place this world would be. There is not a person out there who doesn't own a quark/oddity of their own, and rather than denying it, and ultimately your personality, we should accept the small/big aspects of ourselves that make us who we are.
