Crumbling mountains and filling in craters in three short days or "why I love play on con the way I do"

"Nerd" "Geek" "Wierdo"
It was never these words that hurt me when I was growing up.  Even when I was younger, I took a certain pride in being the goody two shoes who enjoyed and excelled at school.  What hurt were the whispers; the overheard conversations where voices were intentionally raised in my direction saying things like "some of us need to lose weight, don't we?"; the implications that because I was friends with new girl who was awkward, intellectual and more interested in science class than she was the newest keith sweat album, that I was somehow less than; the laughter at my utter inability to understand and deal with someone who does not want to be your friend but doesn't tell you screw off because they enjoy manipulating you and making fun of you; and even, being pushed down, poked, or otherwise physically hurt.

This was my life growing up.  And for those of you saying "kids can be so cruel", one of the many examples above there was suffered at the hands of another child's parent, and those are only a sampling of what I had to deal with when I was younger.  My mother and my family were always supportive, always told me I was smart and good and pretty. But first of all, mom doesn't follow you around all day, not to mention, my mom was the non-confrontational kind so she sat quietly by waiting for karmic consequences to unveil themselves (they often did); she certainly never encouraged me to tell those who would have me believe that I was "bad" because I wasn't as popular, well dressed or ruthless as they where exactly where they could put those harmful words and exactly what they could do with themselves. And Second of all, you start to figure out at a young age, that what mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles do is tell the children in their family how smart and awesome and amazing they are... My mother did it and so did the mothers of all those people who thought it was okay to mercilessly ridicule an adolescent child...

So I grew up knowing that the smart, unusual, passionate-about-life person I wanted to be was "wrong" by most people's standards and that this meant that I would be ridiculed, un-popular and unwanted by most.  I grew up thinking I was ugly, and that every tiny little "peculiarity" about me" was a mountain with a giant neon light on it making me  a person unfit for regular society... And things really didn't improve much around high school or college.

I did, around high school, start learning how to identify those who shared a similar love for reading, and who weren't just taking the most basic math classes they needed to get a diploma and who thought that being friends with a geeky dancer with odd, diverse interests was kind of cool. So I knew deep down, that somewhere there were people who would love me for me but that it wouldn't be an easy life to be a nerd and be friends with nerds.  I got an even better taste of this toward the end of college when I started hanging out with the man who would eventually become my husband--he and his friends sat down to board games on a regular basis and invited me in.  This was a hobby for people who like thinking, who like puzzling things out, who like creatively solving problems because it's fun, not because they'll get an F if they don't or because they'll lose their job if they don't.  However, I still knew, deep down that this was my hobby, not the hobby of someone who was "normal" or "pretty" or someone who was ever going to "fit in."

Flash forward about 8 years to where me and my husband met a group here in Birmingham that plays games regularly. Every week, 8-20 nerds like myself would sit down in a coffee shop and enjoy learning and solving problems for fun in the context of being a wizard or an art buyer or a great military general or a farmer.  I was thrilled, but I still felt like an outsider if I wasn't in this group of people.  I was afraid to admit to those I worked with and interacted with on a regular basis that I enjoyed board games and computer games and reading books and watching comic based movies.  I still saw every "difference" that I had as a mountain or a crater or an irredeemable problem.

Flash forward about 6 more months: my husband and I see a flyer for a convention called Play on Con that promised to have board games, video games, costumes and all other manner of geeky pursuits.  My husband is a long time convention goer, and I, of course, welcomed the idea of going to a place where I could play board games and video games and learn about embroidery if I so chose.

So we show up at the designated place and designated time and pay our money.  We walk around a little bit and immediately get absorbed in video games and checking everything out--so much so that we almost forgot to eat dinner that night. It was great, there were a couple hundred people packed into a hotel because they loved the same "nerdy" things we did.  When I showed up to the con, I expected to play games and get absorbed in geek culture for a weekend.  What I didn't expect started when we came back from dinner.

My husband and I went in to the charity casino and were playing blackjack.  First, I met a girl and her husband who were just as in to board games and geek culture as we were, and they were local. We scored some more friends and allies here within a few hours of getting to the convention.  While at that blackjack table,  I started to notice something more amazing.  People walked in with costumes, they talked loudly about their geeky pursuits, uncaring of who would hear, and they flaunted who they were like it was a badge of honor, not some horrible secret that should be tucked away. They played games and drank and had fun and were themselves without the slightest concern that someone would ridicule them.  It was then that  I figured out that no one here would be phased in the slightest by anything that I was as long as I wasn't there to hurt them. It was then that I was able to relax and truly be myself for an entire weekend.

If you have never been in a place where it is 100% okay to be 100% who you are, it is hard to understand what that feels like.  I have been comfortable and happy in my life before, but, never before that day, did I feel that everything I was was okay and that no one could take that away from me.  Remember, how I said I grew up knowing I was unacceptable?  gone.  Remember how I said I saw all my imperfections as mountains? they crumbled.  Remember how I said I thought I was ugly? I saw a pretty girl in the mirror for three days straight for the first time.  I didn't see a perfect girl or a socially acceptable girl; I saw a beautiful girl who was beautiful despite, or, perhaps, because of all those little things like extra weight and hair that was too long and eyes that aren't perfectly symmetrical.  I was truly comfortable in my own skin for the first time at Play-on-Con.

I literally cried after the con because I knew that going back to the real world would mean that I would start seeing myself as broken and outcast and ugly again.  I knew that my skin would belong to someone else again.  But I was wrong.  Increasingly, I learned to be comfortable with who I was, even if everyone else tried to convince me it wasn't "right." Increasingly, I saw a beautiful, worthwhile, intricate, amazing creature in myself.  More and more I knew that it was not I who was the problem, it was those who would have me believe that uniqueness and intricacies and intellect are not okay.

Play on con didn't give me an identity but it allowed me to be okay with my identity and to learn that those who don't accept it are only worth so much effort and time.  Because of play on con, I know that who I am is okay and that it is okay to be that person.  This is why, if you ever meet me, and I sense that you might be similarly minded, the second or third sentence out of my mouth will always be about play on con.  I love books and video games and costumes as much as the next geek, but play on con isn't really about those things for me.  Me talking about the convention with you is is me saying that I want you to have the same experience I did with being able to accept who you are as amazing (and, you know, being able to play games, make costumes or otherwise be geeky until you can't stand up really is kind of fun).