She asked me what I wished for on my wishlist
What acceptance feels like after being an outsider for so long
Growing up I moved around a lot. I’d meet lots of different people in lots of different cities, lots of different schools, and every time I moved somewhere new, I’d bawl my eyes out for the first week of school. But eventually I’d settle in and make some friends, and mostly really enjoyed my time at the schools I went to. I’d somehow always gravitate to the library though. I felt most at home with my nose in some book rather than playing with the other kids.
I got really good at making friends. When you change schools once a year on average for 8 years, you realize it’s probably more enjoyable when you have friends, and you’d rather have them around sooner than later.
Whenever I first got to a new school, it felt like I had to wait and observe for a while. To see what people talked about, to see what they liked — so I too could talk about and like those things, and in return they would like me. I’d paint over myself, to fit whatever color was most popular at the time, what color it seemed like everyone else was.
This went on, but there would always be a point where I’d feel comfortable enough to talk about and do things other than what everyone liked, and whenever I did, I could feel the people around me like me less.
For the first 2 years of high school, I decided that I would just talk to everyone possible, and be friends with everyone. This was supposed to my social awakening. It’s just that I was still using the friend-making lessons of changing myself to fit with most people. I constantly felt lonely even though I was always surrounded by people. Except all those friends were Red — most people are. Even though I was trying so hard to mix, so hard to make myself look Redder, something about me just felt like I’d rather be alone than alongside colors that just don’t fit with me.
I didn’t even notice how lonely I was with the Red folks until I finally met some people who were Purple. It was just so… quick. Not effortless, but we just got along so quick. It’s almost like each of us was subconsciously drawn to the other, after a lifetime of knowing what Purple looks like, and knowing that most people aren’t Purple makes it easier to spot someone who is.
Yet even if I got the feeling someone was Purple, it was still so hard to tell. Because they too had a lifetime of painting over themselves to get along with most people. They too realized that life was usually better with friends, and they’d rather not spend all their time alone, even though that was where they felt most themselves.
It was only when I became more conscious in my late teens that I started questioning that belief — was it better to feel lonely than to be alone? I spent a lot of time alone after realizing that, and in my solitude I realized… both sucked. What I wanted was really just more people who understood what it was like to be like me, and for us to stick alongside each other. I didn’t care if they were Purple or not, or what labels they went by, I just knew what it felt like to be around someone that got me, that could share the same brain-space as me, and I wanted more of it.
I realized that most people were not for me, and I wasn’t for most people. I am hard to love for most but incredibly easy for some. I am a needle in a haystack. Incredibly hard to find for most but trivially found by someone with a magnet. And even though it was hard to find Purple people since they were painted over, I realized that more layers I peeled back and showed more of my Purple side, the easier it was to notice others who felt the same. The world is a mirror. You can only know someone as deeply as you know yourself.
Last summer I found the highest concentration of Purple in one place I’d ever seen before. Not only that, this place was filled with complementary colors and shades, and suddenly being Purple was cool, even though it never felt that way growing up in Toronto. When I went back to Toronto, it became obvious that there was just too much Red everywhere. I missed the Yellows, Oranges, and Purples of San Francisco. It just felt like a place where all the colors I thought were uncommon belonged.
After I moved back, it just felt like good things were waiting to happen for me. I started an incredible new job I felt extremely unqualified for, got to hang out everyday with the closest friends I’d ever had, and met some of the most wonderful new people every other week.
One day, one of these new friends asked me, “You’re Purple, right?”
And I was like “What? No. Are you?”
And she was like “Yeah I am. I thought you knew you were.”
And I was like “Why would you think I am?”
And she was like “Well, you do a lot of things like many Purple people do. If you want you can do your own reading on it.”
And so I did. And after reflecting on my entire life, I think I always knew I was Purple. I just painted over it so much that I’d almost forgotten all the things I did that felt right to me but made me feel dissonance from everyone else. And when I’d accepted myself and showed more of my true colors and was accepted for it, I thought, “Maybe I’m not Purple after all.”
Because now it seemed like most people were easy to get along with. And I thought being Purple should innately mean not getting along with most people.
Accepting that I’m Purple doesn’t mean that I now actively try to not hang out with anyone that isn’t Purple or a complimentary shade. It just means giving myself some grace when I don’t easily get along with people rather than beating myself up or changing myself to be likeable.
It isn’t an excuse to be terrible to people, or to stop trying to improve myself, even though I’ve subconsciously treated it like that in the past. It’s just knowing that if I’m doing something that I feel good about but someone else looks down upon me for it, I’m not the problem. I don’t want to brute force a relationship with someone I don’t innately sit on a similar wavelength to when there’s so many other people out there I could be giving more love and time to.
That’s not to say I can’t be friends with anyone I don’t immediately gel with. Most of my close friends now I did get along with super quickly, but some of them I didn’t. Some took multiple years for us to grow closer, and now I can’t imagine my life without them. I’d just like to always keep in mind that the energy I feel from people is real and I shouldn’t doubt that like I have in the past because everyone else seems to like them, or they’re attractive or rich or whatever. Similarly true for someone with typically negative qualities, I’ll never feel ashamed for getting along with.
Because at a certain point that was me, and still can be. And I’m so grateful for the people in my life that didn’t see me as unworthy of love. They just see me for who I am.
Here’s some good stuff I’ve been reading recently:
“I’m impressed you remembered I said anything about brilliance. It was a long time ago.”
“I remember so much about you.”
He paused and I thought again that if I waited to say anything, if I bit my worrying tongue just this once and didn’t jump to fill the silence, that maybe he would say more. I listened to him breathe in and out. Then he said, “I remember in sophomore year of college you got six cupcakes from the place across the street from the dorm for my birthday, even though we’d only known each other a couple weeks by then. You were anxious because you’d meant to get one for every single person on the library student advisory council but you forgot one. To make sure everyone got one you didn’t eat one yourself. I told you to take some of mine and you took the tiniest possible smidge you could slice off with a spork.”
“I didn’t know you would notice that.”
This short story was such a banger. Seriously worth your time to read it. Talks about AI relationships in a way that I haven’t seen before, how so easily someone could slip into one out of a pure-hearted desire to just make things better, but why exactly it could be problematic.
As for the quote, I just think its so uniquely intimate to remember and be remembered for the small, seemingly insignificant things that we do. To be loved is to be remembered constantly, to be noticed constantly, to be admired for things we ourselves don’t find admirable, and to appreciate fully what others may overlook.
Gratitude becomes the color with which I paint your memory; this is intentional. Change is hard for me becomes change is a human inevitability, but I can see how your presence has guided the trajectory.
I think of how I am a patchwork quilt of all the people I have loved and of all the people who have loved me.
When I drink coffee, I feel the warmth of the girl who first introduced me to it. When I see a sunset, I feel the laughter of the friends who used to watch with me. When you are gone, you will still hold space in my heart. There are words I say in your voice.
She’s actually spitting facts when it comes to dealing with loss that you know is inevitable. (I guess all loss is inevitable because death but I mean the feeling that sinks in when you realize something is over.) There’s so many people that’ve shaped me that’ll never know how deep their impact was, and some of them I don’t even speak to anymore. I tried to capture how I feel about them with this project. Each person on there is someone who I gave a part of my soul to — they’re kind of a Horcrux, and they each have a significant portion of myself inside them, whether they know it or not.
The quote is just a banger. Change is incredibly hard for me. I’m super stubborn, but also I’ve been going through extreme amount of change since I was a kid, but it never gets easier and almost makes me crave the stability even more.
If I look at things that have turned out well in my life (my marriage, some of my essays, my current career) the “design process” has been the same in each case. It has been what Christopher Alexander called an unfolding.1 Put simply:
I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that. I made it easy for interesting people to find me, and then I hung out with them. We did projects together.
I kept iterating—paying attention to the context, removing things that frustrated me, and expanding things that made me feel alive.
Eventually, I looked up and noticed that my life was nothing like I imagined it would be. But it fit me.
To find a good relationship, you do not start by saying, “I want a relationship that looks like this”—that would be starting in the wrong end, by defining form. Instead you say,
“I’m just going to pay attention to what happens when I hang out with various people and iterate toward something that feels alive”
—you start from the context.
When I was in high school I did a program that had us make 3-3-3 plans. You had to write out what you wanted to accomplish in 3 years then work backwards to set 3 month and then 3 week goals. I did that as an exercise but eventually realized that I never ended up completing those goals yet always seemed to get a lot of good stuff done. “Good stuff” is of course arbitrary, and I’d rather set some goals than none at all, since that’s an excuse for laziness, but overall my life did just get much better after I spent more time around what I like and less time around what I don’t, and paid attention to context clues that hint to me that I might like something.
This process is generally something I’ve been doing for a few years now, and is how I made decisions that seem difficult externally very easily. Some examples include moving to SF with no plan for a Visa, dropping out of college, leaving Shopify to join a startup, and quitting my job with no plan for how to stay in the country.
It’s been a crazy year. Probably the longest of my entire life. A end of year reflection piece is probably coming soon, but I’m not sure when or what form it’ll take. This is just what’s been in my head recently, and I thought I’d try to get it out. If any of this makes sense to you, or is also in your head, I’d really appreciate you telling me.
I’ve been writing online for 6 years now and a lot of good in my life has come of it, but often I still wonder “Is anyone actually reading this? Is it any good? Should I procrastinate my job even more to write more frequently?”. So dropping a sub + comment + DMing me if you like/hate this would be a huge help.
Anyway, appreciate you reading this. There’s a lot of Substacks on the internet and I’m glad you found and decided to read through mine. You now have a little slice of my soul in you, whether you like it or not. To me, that means more than you know.
Thank you to my friend Brit who I met once yet she mentioned I should write about this whole Purple thing I keep talking about, so I did.
Thank you to Subby and Grace for reading early drafts of this and making me feel good about it. And thank you to Fateen for being my body double while I worked on this on Christmas Eve.
Thank you to everyone on this page who’s become a Horcrux for me. Couldn’t be me without you. And to everyone who has 5 star reader activity on my Substack.
banger post
It’s been a crazy year. Probably the longest of my entire life » it was a leap year after all