And, and, and.

I think a lot of people are trying to fit into a mold. We’re trying to model ourselves into something that will fit a spot, instead of making a spot to fit us.

We’re trying to replicate our favorite celebrities, characters, and whoever else we aspire to be like, and we’re trying to pick only things that ‘match’. There’s a societal expectation that we ‘flow’, that all the facets of us fit neatly together and make us whole in a way that is normal, and understandable, and that there is a little box already set up and waiting for us to be put in.

Think outside of the box.

Why can’t we have an ‘and’? Why do we have to only do, or be, or say things that are cohesive with each other. Why does a ballerina also have to be interested in makeup, and pink, and little kittens? Why can’t she swear, and watch hockey on the weekends?

I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with have interests, passions, attitudes, and whatever else that fit well with the things you identify yourself by most, but it’s not going to happen for everybody, and that should be A-okay too.

‘And’ is the word.

And, and, and, and, and. I am an aspiring author, AND I was once a karate teacher, AND I like makeup, AND I enjoy studying, AND I watch trash TV, AND I am a thousand other different things. ‘And’ is the word that makes us up. None of us are any one thing, with exclusion of all else, we are a series of ‘ands’ all put together, messily, but whole.

Using ‘and’ is about defying stereotypes.

It’s about defying the stereotype that, because I like to write, I am ‘boring’, strictly introverted, without any chance of a sudden burst of extroversion, and watch only intellectual programs. Those things are supposed to fit together, but they do not have to fit me. It’s about defying the stereotype that a football player can’t like Disney films, or spend the weekends watching their younger sibling do ballet. Sure, we will all probably meet at least one of the stereotypes associated with what we do, because we are all so very multi-facetted, but we don’t have to ‘fit’ perfectly into the mould, meeting them all.

‘And’ goes further than the things we do for hobbies, or careers, it goes into the things that we can’t help. ‘And’ means that I can be a woman, but I can also be strong, fierce, and tough, I can watch sports, AND achieve the perfect eyeliner, because I don’t have to be only the things that are in strict keeping with one component of me. It means that I can be a person with a disability, who does not live up to the stereotypes put on me. It applies to every minority group; someone with a mental illness is not defined by it, the other parts of them exist beyond the mental illness, not to match it; they are along side it, not because of it. It applies to stereotypes put on people of color, or those who have suffered addiction, or LGBTQI+, or anything else that has a set of stereotypes attached to it.

People are not jigsaw puzzles. They do not fit perfectly. Their pieces are jagged, and unusual, and sometimes they stick out at the edges where they are supposed to be flat. People are multi dimensional, no one is any one thing. We are a thousand different things, all disjointed, and mismatched, and completely in-cohesive with each other. That is what makes us human.

And, and, and; because I am this, AND that, AND every other thing, because people are a series of ‘ands’ strung together, and we do not exist to fulfill an archetype.