"...because I'm so weird"
(being understood --> powerful hope)
“blah blah blah because I’m so weird —”
My twelve-year-old shoots me a look. I pause. I am driving her to school, sharing with my captive audience, and I include this bit of information for context. Her look is a passive, pre-teen gaze with a fleeting furrow of her brow that lets me know she finds what I say strange.
“Did you know I am weird?”
She narrows her eyes, and shoots skeptical vibes at me, which I feel to my core. I am surprised that she doesn’t think I’m weird.
“OK, at least unusual. Can you agree that I’m unusual?”
She looks forward, thinking. “Maybe.”
I smile. I’m glad, I think, that my daughter doesn’t find me weird. Not that I mind so much, being weird. But the fact that to her, the sort of mother — the sort of person I am — is normal.
I could list the multitudinous ways that I don’t fit American society’s norms and the fact that it’s been good news/bad news my whole life. Inspirational authors and professors encourage “thinking outside of the box”, but in reality, what society actually prefers is for unique ideas to spring from socially-typical people. Most people mentally sort those with whom they interact and I often defy sorting — sometimes intentionally, but often inadvertently — and it makes others uncomfortable. Or something. They don’t know what to do with me. And/or they reach incorrect conclusions or make faulty assumptions about me. They mis-sort me.
In short, I have felt misunderstood for my entire life.
I had a conversation yesterday in which I perhaps felt the most understood I have ever felt. I’ve been tearing up about it ever since.
Research I conducted was published last month in a peer-reviewed journal*. This is a big deal, but especially for me. I don’t have a PhD (yet) and it’s my first ever paper as the primary investigator (first author — I did at least 80% of the work, probably more like 85%, though the 15-20% that my co-author did was pivotal and excellent). It’s only the second time I’ve been published. One of my good friends made me create a Google Scholar page for myself, which feels presumptive. LOL.
When it was published, I started contacting the authors whose work I found particularly meaningful to thank them, mention how their work informed mine, and give them a PDF and link. One author responded, basically, “I’ve already read it and it’s great.” I was so surprised. She responded, “Don’t be so humble.”
We met on Zoom yesterday for more than an hour and a half. It was such a good conversation. I could speak in shorthand and she understood. I mentioned ideas and authors and she was already familiar. She’s a lot younger than me, but we have reached many of the same intersections of thought via similar routes. Perhaps I shouldn’t marvel, because we’re both researching the same sub-topic of a sub-topic in a specialized field and there aren’t many of us investigating that same idea, world-wide, right now. So, maybe it’s not that strange — weird — that she and I have traversed somewhat similar paths that reached a similar destination. But, it was still marvelous to me. I marveled. I’m still marveling.
Toward the end of the conversation, she asked, in essence, “Do you want me to work on one of your projects? Or do you want to contribute to one of mine?”
I want to work on one of hers, learn from her, be expanded.
She described the project she had in mind and…
This is so wild…
(Well, it’s wild in the sense that it feels very unlikely.)
She described a brand-new research project, grant-funded, and my conversation partner has already recruited one other person to work on the project. I am now the third person. But, the wild part is that the other person is one whose name is on a sticky note on my laptop, reminding me to follow up with them. It’s another researcher whose work I really love, and we’ve had a tentative, protracted email conversation in the past year and I’ve thought, “I would really really really like to work with her.”
Now I am, and I didn’t even orchestrate it.
Now, I know this is how collaboration often works in academia. But, I’m not accustomed to encountering people who are interested in the same things I am and saying to me, “Wow, I love your work and I want to work with you.” I’m used to being the odd person out, the weird one, the one with unusual, out-of-the-box thinking where listeners are thinking, “What in the hell is she talking about?” while they glance furtively around, cuing me to end the conversation.
My new friend assured me, unprompted, that this would become an increasingly frequent occurrence. “Your work will speak for itself,” she said, confident that it would open doors for me that, in this moment, still feel very shut.
The validation feels good, but more than that, I felt seen, understood, and hopeful.
Hope is so powerful.
I’m still crying, marveling, glowing, thankful.
I’m also so looking forward to the work, together.
*If you follow this link and you read the abstract and plain language summary and think, “Wow, that sounds really interesting,” but it’s paywalled, message me with your email address and I’ll send you a PDF of the whole thing.