“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?” ― Dr. Seuss
I started school very young, so it should be no surprise that I was not as mature as my peers. I was a bit extra hyper and asked way too many questions for the teacher’s taste. When they tried to hold me back in kindergarten, my parents had me tested and the psychologist who worked with me said, “she’s not a smaller apple, she’s an orange.”
That expression became my motto for many years. It helped me to understand why I didn’t fit the traditional school mould even though I would later be identified as gifted (in hindsight I was probably what they would call “twice exceptional” with unidentified attention issues).
I embraced my orange-ness in an apple world.
I might have been considered a hipster before it was remotely considered “hip”. This was especially true in the way that I dressed.
My senior year of high school, when the grunge movement started, I remember bemoaning the fact that the same people who used to mock my style were now complimenting me. When I went to prom in a patchwork dress I designed myself, I expected weird looks but instead got praise instead.
Over the years, though, I saw my deliberate unconventionality as a sign of immaturity and began to tone myself down to fit with the other apples.
I didn’t see it as losing myself, just as part of growing up. In my attempts to become a “mature adult,” orange started to fade out of my life. In my attempts to reign myself in, I was attracted to a relationship that reinforced toning myself down further.