Awkwardness

I've been meaning to write about this for a while. A friend that I was talking to said a while ago that she thinks that a culture of awkwardness has been made in our generation. I believe we are in generation Y or Millienial but more than that I feel like it's the hipster/cool to be a nerd generation. I completely agree with my friend because I think I hear the word "awkward" to describe situations and people waaaaaay more than I used to. What's funny is that a lot of the time, I don't think these people who are using the work awkward actually mean it. It has lost its meaning. I know that sounds incredibly Judgey Judgesmith of me but these "beautiful" people who say, "OMG that was like so awkward, I was having such a bad hair day" (okay I've never actually heard anyone say that but things along those lines) to me sound incredibly so insincere. I just want to push them and say, "Are you serious? Do you even know what awkward is? Let me show you..." and commence my truly awkward life.

Now most people say, "Dude shut up... you're not awkward. You are so at ease in all situations... blah blah blah." The truth is all my life, I have been extremely good at hiding what I truly feel on the inside. In high school people thought I was a happy go lucky teenager who loved life. Truth was, I hated life and everything in it. Very few things brought me joy but it soon got to be too much for me... Anyway. No body knew what I was feeling, not even my family. The only people that found out was because I told my youth group at the time what I was going through and they showered an amazing amount of love on me. I don't tell this story to get "aww so sad" reactions but I tell this story to show what a master of acting I am (I know I'm SO humble ;) hehe) ... I battled with hate demons in me for two years before anyone knew what I was going through because everyone thought that I was the girl who was so happy that all I could do or wanted to do was make others laugh. In reality, I was just covering up my own pain.

Back to the awkwardness. I also realized as I got older, as "extroverted" as I am, I am actually very uncomfortable with myself and therefore, in many situations. I was/am the embodiment of Merriam-Webster's definition: "lacking the right proportions, size, or harmony of parts :ungainly <an awkward design>" or so I feel that way. And by transitive proptery, I am awkward. The Oxford dictionary definition fits me even better: "1causing difficulty; hard to do or deal with: 2causing or feeling embarrassment or inconvenience:3not smooth or graceful; ungainly: uncomfortable or abnormal:" ... You may think I'm not hard to deal with but I think I am. And because of this I become #2 embarrassed and also #3 ungraceful and uncomfortable. It's a vicious cycle. Because of all these things, I operate on a low grade feeling of awkwardness at all times. I revealed this to my best friend Serina a couple years ago and she was astounded. (further evidence to the fact of how great of an actress I am). I grade my awkwardness on a percentage scale. I am very rarely at 0%. Even with my family. I'd say 99% of the time, I'm about at 20-30%. Low but still there. It's because a lot of the time I'm in my own head and my ADD of seeing and processing everything around me.

But my friend in SG said she thinks it's because of the interwebs and how we have become a generation behind a screen whether it's in our laps, in our hands, or at a desk. I agree with her. But also I think some people (like me) are just born this way. I wish with all my heart that I wasn't this awkward and I just felt comfortable with myself but it's so difficult. Le sigh.