Bah Bah Black Sheep

Throughout adolescence and my teen years I couldn't help, but feel different. Let's start with the fact that I'm the only girl with a family of 5 brothers. Growing up as the only girl was pretty crazy. I don't know how else to put it. On a typical day, male cousins and my brothers friends would be all over the place. So needless to say that's a lot of testosterone. I never felt like I belonged.  My parents got divorced when I was 5. Practically everyone has parents that are divorced, I know, but when you're a kid you inevitably feel like something is majorly wrong with your family. Not too mention, my Dad was also well known where I grew up. (I was raised in a close knit modern-orthodox Jewish community, where everyone knows everybody else's business.)  As a very insecure 14 year old, the last thing you want is MORE attention.
Oh, but feeling different didn't end there. As a kid, I was put in every remedial class available. Sometimes I questioned whether something was REALLY wrong with me. I joke about it now (what else can I do?), but I remember those classes like the back of my hand. Then, in junior high while it SEEMED like everyone else had boyfriends I didn't until I was about 16. Again, you ask yourself, "Why? What do they have that I don't?" Meanwhile people are always taking you out of class because you need more testing, the guidance counselor needs to see you..... why couldn't my brain work like every one else? Then, 12th grade graduation rolls around and all your friends are going to college in New York. I felt like I was being left behind. We all made choices and I chose to stay in LA with my serious boyfriend (who later, would become my husband). It was the right decision for me, but it didn't help the ongoing feeling that I had, of the black sheep.
No teen ever wants to feel like a freak. The last thing we wanted was to feel different. We aimed to be just like everybody else. Even when we were expressing ourselves as goth, punk, emo, etc etc, we yearned for acceptance. Some of us pretended not to care (i.e: me), but we did.
Countless journals from my past, all have entries of feeling lonely, isolated, feeling like a freak/weirdo. I was going through the motions of life, but I wasn't really PRESENT at all.
I used to get annoyed when I saw a group of girls that all looked the same. I don't really blame them now. We all find comfort and security in diverse ways. For me, I felt like I was so different and weird already, that I shopped at vintage stores and I tried hard to BE different. (In my 15 year old brain it was called being an "individual"). I found a sort of solace in that. If those girls feel comfort and secure, then so be it. I just HOPE that they have their OWN identity. That they are at least trying to figure out who they are.
If it's tough to be yourself as an adult, then how hard is it as a teen? It's hard as hell, but I can honestly say at the end of the day, it was well worth staying as true to myself, as I possibly could.

Me at age 12

Me at age 15

Always,

Tova

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