18/01/2025
Hello fellow weirdos,
You may or may not have noticed my absence from social media over the last few months and I’d like to share with you why I’ve found it so hard to show up here.
I created this brand three years ago as a big f*ck you to the idea of being “normal”, because for so long I thought that’s what I was supposed to be and I tried so hard to fit in, but no matter how hard I tried I always snapped back to being me.
I was diagnosed with AuDHD (Autism & ADHD) as an adult and it helped explain a lot—why I process sensory information differently, why social “norms” feel so confusing/fake and why I struggle to cope with change. I was so resistant to my diagnosis and continued insisting I was “normal”, because I’d gotten so good at masking. But, instead of feeling relief, I felt frustrated and angry at myself. I felt defective and broken and thought maybe I could “fix” it if I tried hard enough. So, I learned to be what others wanted me to be. I monitored everything I said and did and tried to be less “me”, showing only what others wanted to see. I smiled when I thought I was supposed to and did the boring small talk thing and for a while it worked, but it was killing me. I wasn’t living, not really. I was performing and it was exhausting to constantly edit and curate myself in this way.
I created Stay Weird as a reminder to myself, to stop editing who I am for others. To stop hiding the parts of me that make me, ME and to just show up as my weird, authentic self—regardless of what others might think. But, for the last few months, that same pressure crept back in. I felt like I had to edit myself and curate everything I said or did. It was frustrating and paralysing, because I no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t sustain it.
Continued in a the comments…
