CAUTION: This post is much too long. Please only read if you have the energy, but I’d love your input!

So disclaimer, I am autistic and have OCD so I KNOW I’m weird and just all around someone who sticks out like a sore thumb. But I really need some advice on this, particularly from older/more experienced lesbians but generally from anyone.

Growing up I was always the strange kid. I was really attached to animals and didn’t like people so that’s where all my love went. I have 4 cats so when I was little I would hold them and kiss them goodnight and when I’d see a passed away animal on the side of the road (roadkill sounds too mean) I would sob until my mom comforted me. When I got older I also got weirder. I had no friends. Everyone called me “unibrow girl” because I wasn’t as clean shaven as all the other girls in my grade were. I wore teenage mutant ninja turtle shirts instead of dresses and I would get As on every test in my history class because I was obsessed the moment my teacher said that the reason we learn history was so that we aren’t doomed to repeat it, and I took that literally by making it my special interest ever since. Or when my presentation on what we wanted to be when we grew up was supposed to be 5 minutes but mine ended up being double because I was so excited to talk about how I wanted to be a comic book artist (which I later gave up on after I was told they make no money and women aren’t treated well and I reluctantly picked lawyer instead, despite me still today looking at art books and wishing it were me working at the comic studios). I was bullied throughout school, until I had to go online.

I met my first best friend in college, freshman year. We’ve been friends ever since, which granted is only two years since I’m 20, but still. He told me he loved my voice when we first met, and I cried hard. He had to buy me a smoothie so I would calm down. Everyone said in school I had a man voice because it was deeper and raspy compared to most girls because I got a cold when I was a kid and it just never went back to normal. Hearing him say he loved it shocked me because I just couldn’t believe it.

Then somehow I got my first girlfriend. Every weird thought, she liked. So did my best friend. They loved it. They egged on every single strange idea in my brain. You can call me a sagittarius, or just someone with obviously unmedicated ADHD, but they treated me like a genius. Monday I would tell them that we should move to Scotland and start a farm, and they would start looking for the first flight. Friday I’d say everyone is just too normal for me and I want to be a cowboy. They would ask me if they could come too.

It’s been the first time in my life people didn’t make fun of me for being weird. It was odd. My girlfriend and I broke up, but it was never about me being too strange. But now since my best friend is still my only friend, I get that creeping feeling every once in awhile again. The one that tells me I’m strange and that no one likes me. And sometimes it seems that way. I say a joke with people I don’t know and they just stare for a few seconds before awkwardly laughing. Or I go to a party and someone says hi to my best friend, and then their smile drops when they look at me and ask how I knew this was happening. It’s like I know I’m not wanted. And that scares me.

I like being weird, but I don’t like people viewing it as a bad thing. And what scares me the most is the worry that if I try to start dating again, no one will be like my ex and my best friend. That, on some date from tinder, I’ll say that it’s been my dream to become a hippie and move to some beach, they won’t laugh or ask if they can join, instead they’ll give me a weird look and suddenly I’m unmatched and there is no second date.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. But I sometimes think I’m just too weird. As I’m typing this I’m crying, because what spurred me to desperately ask lesbians on the internet for advice was that I impulsively placed an order for 5 (yes, 5) of my childhood stuffed animals because I decided right here, right now, I am building an army of little toy golden labs that will one day move to the beach with me.

So I ask you, wise lesbians, in a much too long post not for the faint of heart, am I too weird? Is my romantic life doomed to be something I watch people engage in at parties, and sigh because I know I am perpetually cursed to be the one nut that god (if there is one, I’m buddhist so I have no clue) decided “let’s make this little lesbian the weirdest little spectacle the world has ever seen.” Or will there be someone, some day, that also wants to become a cowboy, and the next day wants to be a hippie? I may just be a 20 year old in college, but sometimes it feels like I won’t really have many people that like me for me. And that kind of scares me. Any support or advice would be appreciated, even if it is a “yes you are very fucking weird dude go for a walk.”