Review: The Freak Manifesto (Part 1)
I have to admit, I have been struggling to get myself ready to read the Freak Manifesto by Pace and Kyeli, I have tried, and I have avoided, and I have worried about this for 2 weeks.
Why?
I am afraid. I am afraid that I will read it and I will find that I am not a “freak”, that I do not belong, yet again, that I cannot be part of changing the world.
You see, I have always considered myself an outsider — I never quite FIT with anyone, EVER. I don’t feel like I belong anywhere, with anyone, and for the last little while I had been trying to come to terms with the fact that there was no one out there that could be my “people” — I didn’t fit with my family, I couldn’t stay married, I didn’t feel comfortable with my husband, I didn’t mesh with boyfriends, and I was having a HORRIBLE time making friends. I was (and still AM) desperately lonely, always seeking love and ACCEPTANCE from someone, anyone…
I have always sought to belong to someone, somewhere.
and so it was that I have retreated to the internet, to the blogosphere, looking for other outsiders, looking for CONNECTION in my life.
I don’t want to be lonely anymore.
But what if I am not a freak either? I don’t fit, I don’t feel like I can change anything, because here I am, trying to fit in, trying to connect to other people… and I’m STILL just playing at being “acceptable” and crying on the inside.
Here is my journey while I read the Freak Revolution…
Page 5: A call to Arms Heart
The tears start flowing almost before I finish reading the first sentence. I can see this happening to my son, of people teasing him because he’s a sensitive soul and because he is struggling with the life that he has been placed into — parents divorcing, difficulty in school, not fitting into what the school system says he should be, having trouble making friends, having issues learning to socialize — and how he’s slowly shutting down in front of my eyes… and it hurts me to see this and not know why I can’t help…
Further down the page my life leaps out at me:”A single mother picks her son and daughter up from day care. The kids screech and hit each other. She screams at them to stop, nearly wrecking the car.” – here it is, in print, my failure looking me in the face, that despite rushing home from a job that makes me feel hopeless and dead inside to the 2 people that matter to me the MOST, I fail to be able to relax with them, I feel stressed by how very much I love them, and disappointed at how very VERY much I manage to fail connecting with them.
And I see myself in the last vignette — having a marriage destroyed because we were pulled apart by the fact that my husband and I did NOT connect, there were too many societal and career pressures on him for him to see me as valuable as a wife and stay-at-home mother, and when I went to work to make our finances better, we were FURTHER torn apart by jealousy and forgetting what pulled us together in the first place.
I have lived my life in a way that pulls me (and my family) apart… and I don’t know how to change…
But this is why I am HERE, because I realize that there is something essentially wrong in the way I am living.
It is why I left my husband, because as we lost connection with each other we started to DAMAGE each other. And as much as it hurts, I know that it was what I had to do to be able to go forward with my life, to become more than a weak little mousie and become AUTHENTICALLY myself.
It is why I have been trying to change the way I do things with my kids, why I am trying to relax and become a connected mom, despite the pressure I feel working outside the home 8 hours a day and the expectations of the schools and society and everything else that tries to yank me away from my kids. I am trying to heal, I am trying to help my children heal, I am trying to become AUTHENTIC and I am trying to help my children grow up to feel connected to me, connected to themselves, connected to other people… they are a gift to me, a gift to the world, a chance to heal and CHANGE the world for not only myself, but for EVERYONE…
I am here because I know I am a freak — who I feel I really am is not matching who I am pretending to be — and I am ready to own who I am, I am ready to stop being AFRAID to be who I am, I am going to stop being AFRAID to let people in, I am going to not only learn who I am, but I am going to love and learn and encourage those coming up behind me, my kids, to become truly beautiful people who are NOT afraid of who they really are.
We are here to change the world…its time to shift paradigms…
Come along with me as I work through how I live my life, and hopefully how I make small changes in my life (in ways that I can) to slowly shift how I work, live, eat, breathe, and RELATE to other people…
Come along with us, join the revolution, and share the manifesto… 
Click here to download your copy of the Freak Manifesto
THE GIGGLE Mail around Group
Not like I know anything, but maybe the tears are a good sign.
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/
For what it’s worth, I’m still proud of you. You’ve been true to your sword.
I think the fact you’ve realized certain things, like you and your ex aren’t compatible in the ways important to you, and you’ve made a decision to better your life, is a big start. I don’t think not being like the majority of people makes you a freak. It just means you have different needs and views and codes than most other people.
Believe it or not, I understand what you’re saying. In the past few years I’ve done unbelievable things (to me anyway) to correct my own life. For a long time I’d gotten to some place where I wasn’t me anymore and wasn’t moving forward and it had to change, for my own sanity. People kept trying to mold me into something I wasn’t. I feel that often other people force you to behave in ways that aren’t your norm – I’m fairly anti-social normally – not anti-people, I just never felt the need to be around people all the damn time, or to call everyone every five minutes to chat and other people in my life thought I had some problem with socializing (I don’t) and they’d try to make me more interactive whereas I get along with people just fine – I have a lot of friends – I’m not shy but I’m quiet and like my own space. I don’t want to be the life of the party or the centre of attention. There’s nothing wrong with that. When my ex and I broke up I just thought I’d be alone for a while and it was a sort of relief, then I met my boyfriend who is exactly like me and gets me totally because he thinks the same way I do about space and people and life. It was a learning experience meeting someone else who’s totally normal but who feels as I do about the world. It made a giant difference to me feeling apart from other people. I’m still apart from most people in a respect, but we’re apart together, if that makes sense. There are other people just like me just like there are people like you.
Good luck with your quest. I think you’re going to do ok!
[...] Moon’sLark shared a very touching story of how the manifesto is affecting her. [...]